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The text can be divided into smaller sections as written. It would be hard to selectively chose sections to cover and not others because of the comprehensive nature of the material. However, these chapters can be selectively used if an instructor wanted to supplement their course without adapting the entire text. I am not advocating this, as I think the text would be suitable as a whole for a course, but it is possible. 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
Psychology Statistics For Dummies - AbeBooks 9781119952879: Psychology Statistics For Dummies - AbeBooks
As far as I can tell, all of the content seems to be accurate, formulas are accurate, and the material is unbiasedIn 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. Interval: If you measure a variable at the interval level of measurement, it has the measurement properties of magnitude and equal intervals. 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.
Psychology Statistics For Dummies (Paperback) - Waterstones Psychology Statistics For Dummies (Paperback) - Waterstones
When working with psychology statistics you can classify variables according to their measurement properties. When you record variables on a data sheet, you usually record the values on the variables as numbers, because this makes statistical analysis easier. However, the numbers can have different measurement properties and these determine what types of analyses you can do with these numbers. The variable’s level of measurement is a classification system that tells you what measurement properties the values of a variable have.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.
