behavioral science books

	Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences
	By: Fred Pyrczak, Randall R. Bruce ISBN: 1884585582 Publisher: Pyrczak Publishing Release Date: September, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 224166	I found this book as a PhD student when I first began writing research reports and since then, I have used it as a reference guide to help keep my writing focused and organized. <br /> <br />From what I understand, this book is not meant to teach you how to write or to help you generate content. If you have nothing to write about or if your ideas do not logically make sense, your writing (or lack thereof) will reflect this. What this book does offer is a series of simple, straightforward guidelines (with numerous before-and-after examples) on how to express yourself in the format of a standard research report. Furthermore, the book describes each section of a research paper and explains how that section fits in with the paper as a whole. These descriptions can help give new writers a sense of how to structure their arguments to make the most of the research report format. <br /> <br />Finally, I wholeheartedly disagree with the earlier reviewer who believes that simply being at the higher levels of academia means that one must have already succeeded as a writer. If this were the case, then every paper published would be well-constructed, lucid and easily accessible to others in the field. Anybody who has read more than a dozen articles knows that this is far from true. Furthermore, having a lengthy history of writing (various papers in school, admission essays, etc) does not guarantee that someone will be able to easily write up a complex study with multiple experiments drawing from an extensive body of literature. If your education is worth anything then you will likely find that the demands of writing become greater as one progresses through academia because the projects become more complex and the audience more discriminating. <br /> <br />Many thanks to the authors for putting together such a valuable and concise guide! The product I received was of the finest quality. It came in a timely manner and I was able to review the material prior to class start. The book was packaged in a manner that would prevent any damage thru the mail and came in excellent condition. I was extremely satisfied with this book and the quickness of the receipt of the order. Thank you! I'll let you in on a perfect get-rich scheme. Enter the college textbook market.<p>Mr. Pyrczak is certainly not responsible for the completely ridiculous nature of that market, but his book is a perfect example of the problem. College textbook publishers have perfected the art of manufacturing flimsy, inconsequential, and ultimately un-educational books, selling them at horrifically inflated prices, and encouraging professors to require students to buy them. This particular book is somehow required at my graduate program with extremely little merit. This appallingly weak volume doesn't nearly justify its twenty-plus dollar price tag and can be considered far beneath the abilities of the advanced students who are required to use it. Look no further than the introduction for proof. Pyrczak first admits that the book is not meant to be a style manual or a discussion of the mechanics of word usage. That explains how skinny the book is, but it certainly doesn't explain the price. Then there is the admission that the entire book is based on generalizations which may or may not be useful for particular academic situations. The next admission is that experienced writers will often feel free to violate any of the guidelines covered herein. See pages v-vi for all of the above in plain view, and then wonder why the book even exists.<p>Speaking of experienced writers, I and others like me didn't get to the academic levels at which this book is required without having known these "guidelines" for years and years. Thus, this volume is far beneath its intended audience - that is, those who are required to purchase it. For example, I am not impressed by middle school-level pointers like "The importance of a topic should be explicitly stated in the introduction," nor do I need an entire chapter on how to create a title. This book should be sold to teens who are writing for the first time, and for about one-third the price. As for me, I've been reeled in and clubbed over the head, like the type of big dumb fish that the publishers assumed me to be. [~doomsdayer520~]
	Research Methods For The Behavioral Sciences
	By: Charles Stangor ISBN: 0618705910 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Release Date: 16 May, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 411896
	Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences
	By: Robert R. Pagano ISBN: 0495096385 Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Release Date: 14 June, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 31754	This product was just as described. It was delivered within a satisfactory period of time and it was brand new. No complaints! A+++ The info contained in the chapters is pretty good and I appreciated the examples of how to do the work, however...if you're a student and you want to check your homework, that might be a little hard. The author only lists SOME of the answers to the homework, and the answers they do have usually don't tell you how they arrived at those answers. What they NEED to provide is a student solutions manual. I'd be happy to pay extra for it, but they don't have it. They do sell a student study guide, which I did purchase and that does help some, but it's not even close to what would allow the student to understand the homework problems in a step by step manner. Would someone at the publishing house PLEASE provide a student solutions manual??? PLEEEEASE!!!!!!!! The easiest and best Undergraduate Statistics' Textbook that I have found . Excellent examples which are very practical an easy to understand . Professor Pagano is a superstar Teacher with many years of experience and students who have have him have been so fortunate . <br /> <br />Nestor Mantilla
	APA Style Helper 5.0: Software for New Writers in the Behavioral Sciences
	By: American Psychological Association ISBN: 1591471370 Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA) Release Date: 24 March, 2005 Bioscience book rank: 136372	It took me 15 minutes to install Microsoft NET ...(luckily I'm an experienced computer user), half an hour to enable its macros in vain, and half an hour trying to close it. Finally I had to resort to Windows Task Manager to kill the program. What a nightmare! I echo the other comments that the program is very difficult to figure out. More important (to me) there was zero support when I had questions. APA said it was not their product, that it came from an independent vendor. The vendor simply didn't provide support. Although they told me that a word file could be imported into the program, I never was able to do it. I was never able to use it for a single paper. Before I gave up on it, it stopped booting up on my computer. Again, support couldn't offer any help. It was totally useless for me. I recommend PERRLA. It's cheaper and it works in tandem with your MS Word. <br /> <br />Download it at www.perrla.com That's it. Much easier than this program and so so so much less expensive.
	Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
	By: Michael Thorne, Martin Giesen ISBN: 0072832517 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Release Date: 09 July, 2002 Bioscience book rank: 84007	Need to learn the basics of statistics? B Michael Thorne and J Martin Giesen's book is a very well written, fundamentally sound textbook that will give the reader a well-structured taste how statistics are applied to the behavioral sciences. <br /> <br />The book expounds well on the language of statistics. Chapters 2-6 are dedicated to Discriptive Statistics wherein the student will learn the basics of scaling, frequency distribution, and graphing of data. Following are appropriately placed and well written lessons on Measures of Central Tendency, Measures of Dispersion finishing with the functions and dynamics of Standard Scores. <br /> <br />Generally speaking, the book systematically advances some very neat step-by-step lessons involving statistical formulas for finding the variance et al. It teaches the student the importance of graphs and helps them to develop a deep appreciation for the various kinds of graphs available to express ones data. <br /> <br />The intent of the authors seems to be an effort to delivers a text where every chapter builds perfectly on the next. The student may find himself or herself submerged in learning about the measures of the central tendency and before they know it, they will be calculating t scores, the average deviation, the standard deviation and the variances for given data. <br /> <br />This book also teaches about the importance of the power of a statistical test while helping the student to appreciate the difference between a parametric from a non-parametric test and coaches the student of which test to use when. <br /> <br />This book offers fine systematic lessons in appreciating such tests as one and two-way ANOVA design and makes correlation and regression principles easy to understand. <br /> <br />The book also offers nice easy to comprehend tutorials in Chi-Square goodness to fitness test as well as the Chi square test of independence. The text concludes with a solid lesson in alternatives to the t and F tests and features manageable lessons for the Mann-Whitney U Test, The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed- Ranks Test, and the Kruskal-Wallice-One-Way ANOVA. <br /> <br />The appendix is loaded with a nice review of the formulas for quick reference and glossary definitions that make understanding statistical symbols an easy and pleasant task. It is adequately furnished as well with statistical tables, albeit limited, for locating areas in a z score, and for finding critical values for t, f, q, r, x2 et al. given of course the degrees of freedom. <br /> <br /> B Michael Thorne and J Martin Giesen's book on statistics for the behavioral sciences was such a fine and well organize book that it gave me confidence and today I look forward to the day when I will test my own Null Hypothesis. <br /> I read the whole 3rd edition of this book and I did not have many complains, other than the chapter on 2 way ANOVA was too brief. I tried to look inside this book, but such info is not available here at this moment. At least I know the former edition was really good. Everything else than 2 way ANOVA was explained in narrative ways that definitively help to understand this topics much better than so many other book filled of junk equations. However, I'm not so sure if you should use this book if you're currently taking a statistic related course because you may need immediate answers, just equations and repetitive solutions. The proper and deeper knowledge that will be useful in real life when doing research takes much longer time to learn and you shold take it at some time later on. I am not a psychology major, but a chemistry one and the book is just as helpful to me as to the aimed audience, it's math after all, 1 + 1 is 2 no matter which one is your major. this book is better than the previous book for the course... this one explains things in better detail as if you are just learning the stuff rather than to assume you already know what the authors are talking about
	Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
	By: James Jaccard, Michael A. Becker ISBN: 0534569250 Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Release Date: 29 October, 2001 Bioscience book rank: 396607	This is an exceptional book. Another review says the book is not good with SPSS, which is strange because the book includes sections in all the main chapters that explains SPSS output. This book is great this way. The disgruntled student reviewer must have skipped these because they appear in special chapter boxes that (bad) students often skip over. The treatment of z scores (which is not all that crucial anyway - when was the last time you saw a z score in a research article) is outstanding, so the review just sounds like sour grapes to me. <br /> <br />This book explains statistics intuitively and gives great explanations and examples. It is written very clearly. After reading it, I was able to read and understand journal articles much better. It has special sections to tell you how statistics will be presented in research reports and how to read them. This is a great feature. This book helped me so much and I think it deserves seven stars! As a grad student who is at present using this textbook (I am in spring quarter, 06), I will sum it up in two words "it sucks". I have taken three different statistic classes and I am using their textbooks to fill in the many blanks this textbook has. <br />There are two major problems, one is that it does not have a connection with statistic software. My instructor assigns the problems in the chapter exercises to be performed on SPSS. This textbook is not geared for SPSS; it is set up for the problems to be worked the old fashioned way--paper and pencil, with a hand calculator to be used. It does not work well with SPSS, as my classmates and I have complained about to each other. <br />The other is that the authors seem to assume that students who have signed up for statistical classes love stats. Wrong ! ! ! Most students dread statistics class, they jokingly call it sadistic class. This is the only class that many of us feel totally stupid in (remember, we are GRADUATE level students, so we are not stupid). We need a textbook that explains everything in simple terms, gives many examples and then explains the steps in detail. The problems should be up-to-date, and able to be used in SPSS software. <br />The book does not adequately cover many topics, and the one subject that ever stats student hates to deal with is Z-scores. And as usual, this textbook hardly mentions it, four pages in one chapter discussing how to do z-scores. Yet it is one of the most important methods a stats student needs to know how to do. Several of my classmates feel that this book was a waste of their money. <br /> <br />For basic statistics in undergrad it may be adequate, or for those who are knowledgeable of statistics this may suffice; but for regular statistic class students, this textbook fails the class. <br /> The book is up-to-date and effectively presents the basic concepts. Deals with current power and sphericity concerns. Example SPSS-keyed analyses and APA-format results sections are especially valuable for research training. Uses post-hoc Tukey HSD test. Separate nonparametric chapters. The authors know their material (not always the case with statistics texts) and they provide a solid (higher-level) introduction. Good selection of topics and fairly thorough. Perhaps a bit wordy at times. One of the best available introductions. From a long-time teacher of statistics with no connection to authors.
	Essentials of Research Design and Methodology (Essentials of Behavioral Science)
	By: Geoffrey R. Marczyk, David DeMatteo, David Festinger ISBN: 0471470538 Publisher: Wiley Release Date: 02 March, 2005 Bioscience book rank: 50846	In the introduction, the authors state "our goal is to provide readers with books that will deliver key practical information in an efficient, accessible style." The authors have clearly met their goal - the book is clearly written and the examples are engaging and interesting. As the authors are professors, I was very surprised by this. <br /> <br />I used this book to update my knowledge of basic research, and it was perfect. I think it would also be an ideal introduction to research design for beginners.
	Behavioral Science in Medicine
	By: UNKNOWN ISBN: 0781736692 Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Release Date: 01 November, 2003 Bioscience book rank: 402404
	Comprehensive Guide to Interpersonal Psychotherapy (Basic Behavioral Science Books)
	By: Myrna M. Weissman, John C. Markowitz ISBN: 0465095666 Publisher: Basic Books Release Date: 14 January, 2000 Bioscience book rank: 246978	Excellent overview of IPT from "the source", that is experts involved in its development and research. I decided to buy this book because I needed an introduction to IPT. It discusses in a clear manner the theoretical underpinnings of IPT, and the strategies and techniques used in IPT; the chapters are peppered with case histories and useful questions to ask and interventions to make with patients from an IPT perspective. I give it 4 stars rather than 5 because I think it may try to be all things to all people, blending too much of the elementary and esoteric. I think this book is meant for clinicians, and I don't think a lay person would be much drawn to it; as such I think some of the introductory information on depression (criteria for diagnosis etc.) is too elementary for your typical, even neophyte, clinician. The chapter on research data supporting IPT is rather esoteric; I liked this chapter, but this esoterica doesn't fit with the elementary aspect I just mentioned. This is a minor critique in what is otherwise a very good book for an introduction to IPT. I recommend it. Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is an important intervention in mood and other related disorders. This volume represents the gold standard reference for any clinician seeking to learn or consolidate their practice of IPT. Updating the original 1984 text, this comprehensive reference clearly describes the theoretical basis of IPT as well as providing a good introduction to the actual practice of IPT in day to day clinical life. The real strength of the volume however, is its scholarly and comprhensive review of previous and ongoing research in IPT and its newer applications in other disorders. This volume is a wonderful inclusion on any library bookshelf as well as being an invaluable tool for the clinician seeking a comprehensive introduction to Interpersonal Psychotherapy
	Basic Statistics For The Behavioral Sciences
	By: Gary W. Heiman ISBN: 0618220178 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Release Date: 30 July, 2002 Bioscience book rank: 190930	It works for the class but somewhat outdated..he's got a new one out that's better. I took psychology at Monash University in Australia when I was 15 years old, and thankfully Heiman's book was the set text for research methods and statistics in the first year. Although the word "basic" is in the title, it is not a book without depth. It is an easy to read survey of undergraduate level statistics used in psychology courses. By the time you've finished with this book, you will be able to comfortably read and critique the vast majority of research papers in psychology, including some meta analyses. <br /> <br /> This book will be especially useful if you've never studied statistics or you believe you are no good at any kind of mathematical study. I already had a strong background in mathematics when I took courses using this textbook, but I still found this text enlightening and pleasurable reading. <br /> <br /> Heiman uses everyday language and clearly explains not only the funny squiggles and symbols, but also exactly when and how to use different types of statistics, how to conduct and evaluate research and how to interpret the meaning of research results in the behavioural sciences. <br /> <br /> Heiman changed my mind about statistics with this book. Before I took statistics I could only think, "lies, damn lies, and statistics." I thought they were useless, misleading, and tools of propaganda. After finishing this book, I found that good statistics were useful and reliable aids to understanding an astonishing range of data. <br /> <br /> While this book is accessible to the average student, and even to those who's achievements in mathematics/statistics are modest or non-existant, it will not insult the intelligence of more experienced students, either. <br /> <br /> If you've ever wondered about the Chi Square test, ANOVA, "no significant difference from a chance variation," z-scores, r, N=whatever, then you will love this book. You will also be able to play "spot the useless or misleading statistics" and make truly informed decisions about social science research.