The lack of literature-based guidance for conducting evaluations of statistics texts has likely contributed to some disturbing patterns in published evaluations and studies of statistical texts. Similar patterns probably exist in unpublished evaluations, such as the evaluation (and possible adoption) of a test by an instructor. A critical failing in this area is that published evaluations almost invariably employ criteria for conducting the review that lack any literature-based rationale, being, apparently, experientially based, a failing which is compounded by a lack of empirical evidence supporting the usefulness of the criteria employed in the evaluation. The purpose of these (symposium) papers is to continue and extend the research exemplified by Cobb (1987), Hubety and Barton (1990), Brogan (1980), and others by attempting to construct and pilot criteria for evaluating statistics texts that are grounded in the statistical education and text evaluation literatures. This study is an initial step in a line of research which may result in the establishment, maintenance, and updating of a database containing evaluations of introductory statistical texts similar to (but much smaller in scale) that maintained for educational and psychological tests (e.g., Mental Measurements Yearbooks). Evaluative information of this kind should benefit the direct consumers of these texts, students and instructors.
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