Establishing objective criteria for evaluating statistics texts


Authors: 
Herrick, M. L., & Gold, K.
Category: 
Pages: 
13-Jan
Year: 
1994
Publisher: 
Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April
Place: 
New Orleans
Abstract: 

In the course of research conducted with Michael Harwell of the University of Pittsburgh, we have developed a series of five instruments intended to explore several aspects of statistics textbook selection. It should be noted that many of the categories of questions in these instruments were inspired by the previously named articles, and our debt to their groundwork is extensive. However, choosing a statistics text for social science students is not as straightforward a task as choosing a text for students in their major field of study, and therefore warrants a specialized series of instruments. The instruments we have developed range from a general survey for instructors and students who are currently using a statistics textbook in a course, to particular instruments are designed so that data obtained from their administration could be useful to broad-range researchers, to departments trying to choose a textbook, or to writers and publishers of new statistics texts. The five instruments are reproduced in whole in the appendix. These are: 1) a student survey for currently-used textbooks, 2) an instructor survey for currently-used textbooks, 3) an instructor survey of what an ideal statistics textbook would be like, 4) an expert evaluation instrument that may be used on any statistics textbook, and 5) an instrument covering relevant objective information about any statistics textbook.

The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education