Psychology Statistics For Dummies

Product Information

The range is the difference between the highest score and the lowest score in a variable. These are the values that have been scored by participants in the study, and not necessarily the highest and lowest possible scores. Overall the text seems consistent in terms of terminology and framework. There are some consistency issues between the chapters. In particular, some of the formulas can be difficult to read in how they are formatted - Chapters 6, 7 and 8 the formulas that include the standard error formula look odd (the fraction in the denominator), but in the other chapters the formulas look fine. The X-bar line is too long when showing the sample mean throughout the text.

Psychology Statistics For Dummies | Wiley Psychology Statistics For Dummies | Wiley

This textbook is as culturally inclusive as any statistics textbook. This is an area where the professor will want to supplement if they espouse the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major 2.0. I recommend Kenneth Keith's book Culture Across the Curriculum as a starting point. The content in this text is already dated as there is no integration of statistical software output, which I think should be included for descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing. Using statistical software is prevalent in the workplace and academic settings so the opportunity for students to view and interpret output is important. The primary way the text is organized is by chapter, with each chapter covering a different topic. Since it is a *.pdf the easiest way for the instructor to make it modular is with a *.pdf editor. This is not provided by the authors. When you conduct your statistical analyses on this data, you need to know what role each variable played in your research design. Generally speaking, you classify variables in psychology statistics as independent variables, dependent variables or covariates. Independent variables

The majority of the content in the text seems accurate. There is an error in the effect size formula for Chapter 9 - it shows the calculation for t instead of d. The text was quite clear. The authors’ voices and senses of humor come out throughout the text making it a very enjoyable read. Organization is good and is fairly standard for the flow of a stats class. Personally, I'd prefer to start with correlation and regression, but how it is works.

Psychology Statistics For Dummies - Donncha Hanna, Martin Psychology Statistics For Dummies - Donncha Hanna, Martin

This book focuses on calculations but does not use the computational formula for sum of squares. I think this makes it more difficult for students to avoid making computational errors and it makes the calculations more difficult. The is not indexed for a pdf reader making unusable for a course. Adding bookmarks to each chapter and chapter sub-sections would make the text much more usable. Ease into statistics - start out with an introduction to how statistics are used by psychologists, including the types of variables they use and how they measure them The bad news first: if you want a psychology degree you'll need to know statistics. Now for the good news: Psychology Statistics For Dummies. Featuring jargon-free explanations, step-by-step instructions and dozens of real-life examples, Psychology Statistics For Dummies makes the knotty world of statistics a lot less baffling. Rather than padding the text with concepts and procedures irrelevant to the task, the authors focus only on the statistics psychology students need to know. As an alternative to typical, lead-heavy statistics texts or supplements to assigned course reading, this is one book psychology students won't want to be without. Analyse this - get up to speed on statistical analysis core concepts, such as probability and inference, hypothesis testing, distributions, Z-scores and effect sizesCons: Ideally the symbols for mean and standard deviation would be the ones specified in APA format, but his text uses X bar instead of M for sample mean and S instead of SD for sample standard deviation. Only the derivation formula for sum of squares is provided, and not the computation formula. Chi square goodness-of-fit model offered in chapter assumes an equal frequency across cells, rather than matching proportions to those in a known population. The formula notation for chi-square is not what I’m used to seeing. There are no complete tables (partial tables are embedded within the chapters) – so you would need to link to another OER for that. That said, the tables are probably more appropriately placed in a particular chapter and not in the Appendix. I use a lot of “word problems” in statistics (summaries of real studies so that students can work on identifying DV, IV, writing hypotheses, in addition to computing the statistical tests. Overall there are about 10-12 end-of-chapter problems for each chapter and not many are word problems, so I will need to supplement. There are no instructor resources, test banks, etc. If you have taught statistics for awhile you have probably developed your own resources (i.e., Powerpoints, test questions, homework questions, word problems for in class exercises) but if you are just starting out this probably isn’t the OER for you. I didn't see anything offensive in anyway, but there was no intentionality in using psych examples or cross-cultural examples either. The book is well-written (i.e., clear, concise, engaging). It is appropriate for an undergraduate taking their first statistics course.

Statistics For Dummies Cheat Sheet Statistics For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Reviewed by Chrislyn Randell, Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 12/3/20, updated 2/26/21I am torn about the use of the X-bar to represent the sample mean. For students who will be moving on to more advanced statistics the use of X-bar would be helpful, but there is a small proportion of my students who move on to more advanced statistics. The norm in social statistics is now to use the M for the sample mean and my students may be confused as they move into the research methods lab course and are presented with M instead of X-bar. I think the content itself is up-to-date and will not need much updating. The only pieces that may need updating are those that show how to present the results. I believe it was intended to be APA style which may require updating if the APA guidelines change. I also liked the section on misleading graphics – not always included in introductory statistics books- so it was nice to see in this text. I think knowing about data visualization techniques will be a very useful skill for all students, especially in the era of big data. I would have liked sections in the text explaining how the results would have been presented in an APA format write-up. I think that would add context for students to see how these results are used beyond running numbers, and this also allows them better understanding of how all the parts of the analysis fit together - descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, effect size, and confidence intervals. I believe most statistics texts include this information.

Psychology Statistics For Dummies | Wiley

Interval: If you measure a variable at the interval level of measurement, it has the measurement properties of magnitude and equal intervals. Dependent variables are sometimes referred to as outcome variables or criterion variables . A dependent variable is usually the variable that you expect to change when you manipulate the independent variable. In other words, the dependent variable is the variable that the independent variable affects. Therefore, the dependent variable is so called because its value depends on the value of the independent variable (at least in theory). Covariates The text has distinct chapters and subheadings, and some reference to previous chapters is necessary in a statistics book. The book is not overly self-referential.You determine the most appropriate measure of dispersion as follows, depending on the nature of your data: In general, the content was accurate. There were a few instances where the material was oddly worded or a confusing. For example, when covering hypothesis testing, an example claims that because temperature is allowed to vary 1 degree in either direction means that the standard deviation must be 1. This is not how standard deviation is defined and can be misleading to students. Later in the text, when interpreting a correlation of -1, the authors state “as X goes up by some amount, Y goes down by the same amount, consistently”. This is an inaccurate interpretation of correlation. X and Y are more than likely on different scales, so they would not change by the same amount. This is a very important distinction as correlation quantifies the relationship of standardized scores, while slope considers the scales of the variables. It was easy to single out one or two cases because the almost the entirety of the text is accurate. Reviewed by Scott Frankowski, Assistant professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on 11/15/22