Research Methods and Statistics: A Critical Thinking Approach 4th Edition

Very easy to read, information presented in an easily understood order, information is all pertinent (don't you just hate when they waste time repeating themselves? This one does not: everything said once and clearly).

This is a required text book for a class I took last semester. Research in psychology is not my strong area. This text book helped break it down to my level so that I understood everything better.

Over the past couple years I have found that Psychology text books are useful in academic settings, but not for people who just want to pick up the book for "just for fun" reading. The text "Research Methods and Statistics" is very beneficial if you are in a course that requires this specific text. One of the problems I have found with Psychology books is that they do not discuss topics fully, but in this specific text the author goes into depth to make sure that you know what you are discussing.For a research & statistics course I have found that the math content and reviewing graphs is hard. Luckily, this text provides step by step examples to make it easier to complete each problem. Standard deviation, variance, mean, mode, etc. are just some examples of the types of mathematical terms you will run into. Bar, scatter, line graphs are all types of graphs that are used to show these mathematical calculations in different ways. This book could possibly even be a good teacher for a psychology student but I would not fully depend on it because some individuals are vocal learners not visual.An APA style paper is discussed in this book as well. If you are a Psychology major (which I assume you are if you are even required to purchase this type of text), you will need to write some form of APA styled paper. This type of writing is different from the standard MLA format. This book assumes you know absolutely nothing about an APA styled paper which is awesome! There are different communication guidelines, steps in organizing the paper and the book even includes a sample paper in APA style that is a good reference when writing your own.For an easy flow this book displays a table of content that directs you easily to the different parts of the book. Within the titles of the chapters it gives sub-titles of the different points that are covered in each part of the given chapter. Easy to locate any information needed!I would recommend this text of course. Like I have said previously this text gives you step by step mathematical instruction to help you solve problems, displays the different graphs used in statistics, provides well written content to help you remember different terms and it even gives you an APA styled paper to help you write your very own. It is hard to find a good/clear text to guide you through a course, but luckily this one is perfect if you need a teacher like text. Psychology is a hard enough degree to obtain, so to achieve this goal you are going to need to pass the courses needed and this book makes that job easier than others.Unfortunately the downfall to this text is it is not an easy to read text. The author uses many vocabulary words that are needed to know to fully understand the content and that is why I said previously that this is not a just for fun read. Other than that this is a great book and well worth the purchase and read for the course!

Bought it for my class. Very information and in great condition.

This was a required text for two Statistics classes at my university with one being a continuation of another. The book is easy to read, but I really hate the way it is organized and the way it gives examples. I wish the examples were more clear-cut and had their own section separate from the paragraph text so that they were easier to find and look at whenever need be. Having to go back and search for that one example in that one paragraph is quite tedious. I also wish it had even more examples. However, the book is much easier to understand than most statistic-based or math-based textbooks. I think I would prefer this textbook to any other, if that counts for anything.

This was a fantastic textbook! I am not a fan of research methods and statistics, but this book explained things clearly and concisely. I was able to easily grasp the concepts presented.

Good amount for textbook.

I actually learned so much from this book! I don't know if it's due to the previous courses I had in statistics, but somehow Dr. Jackson made the analyses and formulas understandable and this is important because once your "understand" when, why, and how to use a particular analysis (from sampling to beta level calculation), you'll be better able to support internal and possibly external validity, thus strengthening your research to withstand scrutiny from peer review. This book was VERY helpful to me in my quantitative design course because the my online degree program does not "teach" you much at all; you are left to learn the material on your own... and you better be able to apply what you've taught yourself because your research will depend on it! They call this type of pedagogy "instruction through feedback". I loathe it and love at the same time because it forces you to think and it prepares you for actual research in the real world. Anyway, I wish I had this book for my first statistics course; though I did well, I'm pretty sure I would have had an easier time "doing well". This book is one of the few books that actually gives meaningful examples and they're not all medical statistics examples.The downside: the book is very expensive ($154.00). Granted, the market may have more to do with influencing prices, but damn, this book was pricey :) Still, as I believe, "Ya can't put a price on knowledge & understanding, but you can lower the cost of them"I believe the best statistical research books out there are the ones that employ examples from various fields of discipline instead of dozens of examples in medicine or psychology. How about using criminal justice, history, business, architecture, and other fields of study as examples? This makes learning stats more meaningful and possibly easier to understand.Overall, I'm glad I have this book and I know I'll use it often for future reference.

great book, very helpful for a novice researcher trying to learn more.Found it fast to read through.Enjoy Ms. Jackson's take on research.