Data Analysis in the Psychological Sciences: A Practical, Applied, Multimedia Approach

Reviewed by Ruth Casper, Instructor, Rochester Community & Technical College on 6/15/23

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This brief book covers the main concepts of statistical analysis, explains descriptive statistics very well, and explains how to use Excel and R to conduct data analysis. It contains a glossary but no index. It does not provide information on inferential statistics (t-test, ANOVA), as the authors plan to cover these topics in a future textbook.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Although I am not familiar with R (I have used SPSS and JASP), the content appears to be accurate and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Using R for data analysis is currently quite popular, so the timing if this textbook is great. And Excel is standard software, so information about Excel is appropriate.

Clarity rating: 4

I found the book very easy to follow. Some of the bolded terms were not defined in the text; however, they were covered in the glossary.

Consistency rating: 5

There are no concerns with consistency.

Modularity rating: 5

The text is easy to read, with the occasional "boxed information" to highlight concepts. Additional boxes are used for practice items.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization is logical, and the topics flow well.

Interface rating: 4

Some of the boxes' layout is a bit off; perhaps this occurred when saving it as a pdf. For example, the word "Hours" might be divided into two lines, with "Ho" on the first line and "urs" on the second line. The authors provide links to helpful videos explaining how to perform tasks in Excel and R.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There are minimal issues concerning grammar.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

No concerns here.

Comments

This textbook is very readable and brief. However, since it was designed to cover descriptive statistics and correlation, it does not address t-tests, ANOVA, factorial designs, and Chi-Square. Once the authors' next book comes out (covering these topics), this would be a fine resource for the instructor who uses R as a statistical analysis software package.