Book Description
A comprehensive statistics text for graduate students
Explaining Psychological Statistics, Second Edition successfully bridges the gap between statistics and research methods courses by incorporating research methods throughout the text. In a clear and engaging manner, this comprehensive text covers both introductory and advanced topics in statistics, including the concepts (and limitations) of hypothesis testing; linear correlation and regression; the t-test and matched t-test; basic analysis of variance in one- and two-way designs; and repeated measures ANOVA.This new edition also features:
- Multiple regression, the regression approach to one- and two-way ANOVA, and ANCOVA
- Advanced topics, such as the intraclass correlation, the analysis of Latin-square designs, and the analysis of trend components
- Relevant research designs for numerous areas of psychological research
Customer Reviews:
The most effective (and easy) way to learn statistics.......2005-07-12
For a while, I was looking for a good book on statistics, and finally, I found it! This book is excellent for those who are going to start learning statistics (every thing is explained very well from very beginning!) as well as for those (like me) who look for more advanced books. It is almost perfect! It has precise and clear explanations, simple brief examples, thoughtfully chosen questions and tasks at the end of each chapter, good overall organization. Every word (well, sentence) contributes to understanding of concepts, no unnecessary information, no waste of time. Every new concept is built on the previous ones, no gaps in explanation, no unanswered questions. It feels as if the author follows a reader's mind, if some questions arise they get answered in the next paragraphs. Pure pleasure! Ultimate book on statistics! Highly recommend.
Book Description
The classic text is Psychometric Theory. Like the previous edition, this text is designed as a comprehensive text in measurement for researchers and for use in graduate courses in psychology, education and areas of business such as management and marketing. It is intended to consider the broad measurement problems that arise in these areas and is written for a reader who needs only a basic background in statistics to comprehend the material. It also combines classical procedures that explain variance with modern inferential procedures.
Customer Reviews:
Purchase the 2nd Edition.......2007-06-15
As have several other people who have reviewed this book I would suggest purchasing the 2nd edition. I have both of them sitting side by side on a shelf and use the 2nd edition much more than I use the 3rd one. It is not written in as clear a manner as the 2nd edition and sought to expand beyond psychometric theory which might have watered it down some. I was surprised that the reviewer who wrote that the 3rd edition is longer than the 2nd is correct as the 2nd is thicker - but it does have fewer pages.
I would give it -5 starts if possible.......2007-01-29
This is not really a book. It's more like a composition notebook with definitions of terms on the even-number pages and, you bet, ruled spaces on the odd-number side. So this 103-page "book" is more like 51 pages (translation - you get only 50% for what you paid). Another reviewer said it's more like a Cliff Notes of the original book. Even that is too flattering. It's not even a Cliff Notes because what are on the left side (the even-number pages) are just definitions of terms taken from the textbook. There is no structure or organziation. So you cannot even tell how those terms relate to each other. I was actually looking for a Cliff Notes of Psychometric Theory, so it doesn't bother me it's not the real textbook. But in this form this book is totally useless. I could teach a monkey to copy all the terms and definitions from the textbook and publish a book like this and make some easy money. An outrageous rip-off! Stay away from all books in this Cram101 series. If you "cram" like this you probably will fail all your exams! I'm an college instructor myself and I will never test my students on how good they remember defintions in the book. At the very least learning is about understanding of the relationships between the terms.
THIS LISTING IS MISREPRESENTATIVE.......2006-09-03
I ordered this book, thinking that it was the text book (as the title of the listing suggests). My mistake not to read all the way to the bottom of the page where the true nature of this publication is finally revealed, but SHAME ON AMAZON for listing it this way. There is nothing in the actual listing of this book that suggests that it is merely a "cliffs notes" guide to the book itself. I now have to scramble to find the correct book. When you're looking for textbooks, most of us look at the title, the author and the correct edition, which this listing contains at the very top. Thanks, Amazon, for taking advantage of those of us who are too busy to read the fine print!
comprehensive but jumbled.......2006-03-16
This is one of the landmark Measurement books for Psychologists. It does present a relatively comprehensive treatment of the issues facing researchers when developing measures. Unfortunately, the style of writing used in the book makes it exceedingly difficult for students to extract the useful information from the chapters. Specifically, the chapters are not particularly well organized - particularly the ones with fewer equations in them - often jumping back and forth between topics rather than presenting them more systematically. Furthermore, the prose explaning concepts and equations is basically written in an overly complex and sometimes cryptic style more appropriate for mathematicians and psychologists from the 1950's than for graduate students or modern consumers. I only bought the book to augment the graduate level measurement class that I teach and despite the fact that I have a solid background in mathematics, I grown inwardly every time I have to pick up a chapter in this book and read it.
get the 2nd edition.......2005-02-06
I am in a management PhD program and we have to read this book for our required class in psychometric theory. I totally agree with one of the other reviewers that almost no term is clearly defined by Nunnally and Bernstein in this 3rd edition. The book goes on and on and on talking about validity, reliability, scaling, ... without defining any single term in a concise manner. It is very frustrating!
So, my suggestion for everyone is to get the 2nd edition. I read it and was happily surprised. Nunnally is great, Ira Bernstein messed the 3rd edition up (Nunnally died a while ago and Bernstein was responsible for the writing of this edition). The previous edition is much, much shorter and has better organized chapters that go right to the point (well, relatively speaking ). In addition, I recommend several short Sage books (e.g., factor analysis from Kim and Mueller), which are much clearer.
In any case, this book or better the 2nd edition, is a must have for any social science researcher (or wanna be researcher ).
Book Description
Item response theory has become an essential component in the toolkit of every researcher in the behavioral sciences. It provides a powerful means to study individual responses to a variety of stimuli, and the methodology has been extended and developed to cover many different models of interaction. This volume presents a wide-ranging handbook to item response theory - and its applications to educational and psychological testing. It will serve as both an introduction to the subject and also as a comprehensive reference volume for practitioners and researchers. It is organized into six major sections: the nominal categories model, models for response time or multiple attempts on items, models for multiple abilities or cognitive components, nonparametric models, models for nonmonotone items, and models with special assumptions. Each chapter in the book has been written by an expert of that particular topic, and the chapters have been carefully edited to ensure that a uniform style of notation and presentation is used throughout. As a result, all researchers whose work uses item response theory will find this an indispensable companion to their work and it will be the subject's reference volume for many years to come.
Customer Reviews:
A Comprehenstive Account of Item Response Theory.......2007-05-01
The book, edited by van der Linden and Hambleton, is a comprehensive
account of Item Response Theory. The "modern" in the title of the
book is indeed reflected in new developments such as nonparametric
models and mixture models. The audience of the book is targeted
toward those who want to further develop models around Item Response
Theory. People who are more interested in applying IRT may prefer
books like Applying the Rasch Model: Fundamental Measurement in the Human Sciences.
Although the book was contributed by multiple authors, the two editors
indeed made efforts making notation consistent and the structure of
every chapter similar (Introduction, Model Description, Parameter
Estimation, Examples, References), which is very important for readers
like me who don't follow the book from cover to cover.
Gift in the field of Educational Measurement.......1999-12-15
This book is realy a gift for those persons who are working in educational Measurement.
Book Description
This book introduces the reader to the main quantitative concepts, methods, and computational techniques needed for the development, evaluation, and application of tests in the behavioral/social sciences, including educational tests. Two empirical examples are carried throughout to illustrate alternative methods. Other data sets are used for special illustrations. Self-contained programs for confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis are available on the Web.
Intended for students of psychology, particularly educational psychology, as well as social science students interested in how tests are constructed and used, prerequisites include a course on statistics.
Customer Reviews:
A fine text on Test Theory.......2007-09-06
I had the fortune of having one Roderick P. McDonald as my instructor in this topic, in the very last semester he taught at the University of Illinois before he retired and returned to his first love, Sydney. This textbook is, essentially, an expanded version of his lecture notes. (As an aside, Rod writes pretty much like he speaks---dry British wit and all---so if you read his book you will get a decent idea of what he is like in person.) Test Theory takes McDonald's basic position that test theory is an integrated field, ranging from classical test theory as a computationally feasible special case of the Spearman factor model all the way to item response theory, which is a nonlinear model that adjusts for the nature of binary data. The factor model is the glue that holds everything together. McDonald's perspective that the confirmatory model makes more sense and that once you have learned it, the exploratory model will be simple to understand, almost as an afterthought, is a very nice bonus. Other books on this topic, by contrast, do not give the reader a sense of the unity of the topic.
The one downside to the book is that it has a lot of typos. You should definitely make sure to get the errata, which used to be available on the publisher's web page. The publisher also indicates that a suite of free programs (Confa, Cofa, Cosan, NOHARM) written by Colin Fraser (one of McDonald's students) is available, but I cannot find them at present.
Book Description
Click 'Additional Materials' and 'Supplements' on menu at left for information about the Instructor's Resources CD-ROM and Student Data Sets
“This book provides all the information one would need to perform classical test theory analyses for reliability, item analysis, etc., and relieves professors of the need to come up with such information on their own. This allows them to concentrate on presenting the mathematical and statistical bases for the procedures that students will be using.”
—Keith F. Widaman,
University of California, Davis
“There is a real need for something like this, and the authors have done a good job covering the domain.”
—Kevin Murphy,
Pennsylvania State University
The major emphasis of most psychometrics textbooks is on explaining test theory. Although students certainly need this foundation, professors wishing to supplement theory with applied examples and exercises have traditionally had very few sources.
Measurement Theory in Action: Case Studies and Exercises is the perfect solution. In this volume, authors Kenneth Shultz and David Whitney provide professors and students the opportunity to implement the theoretical material students are exposed to elsewhere in their courses.
The text comprises twenty modules, each corresponding to entire chapters in typical measurement theory texts. The modules begin with introductory concepts and a review of statistics; progress through conceptions of content, criterion-related, and construct validation, validity generalization and test bias; and they conclude with more advanced topics such as multiple regression and item response theory (IRT). Each module is composed of an overview, case studies, exercises, Internet references, and suggested further readings. An extensive glossary of key terms is also provided for quick reference.
Key Features
- Concise overviews clarify major topics in classical and modern test theory
- Case studies depict typical dilemmas and difficulties faced when applying measurement theory
- Exercises include brief in-class assignments, take-home or lab tasks that require the use of statistical analysis software, and course-long test development projects
- Suggested readings and Internet references provide timely and relevant measurement-related information
Measurement Theory in Action is ideal as a supplemental text for any measurement course across the social sciences and especially in departments of psychology and education. Professional researchers and academics in need of a quick refresher on the application of measurement theory will also find this an invaluable reference.
An
Instructor's Resources CD containing exercises and assignments is also available. For a complete description of the Instructor's Resources CD, please click on "Supplements" on the menu at left under "About this Book."
Also included are step-by-step examples with computerized data sets that allow students the opportunity to work with real data to practice their skills in the area of applied psychological measurement (click 'Additional Materials' on the menu at left under "About this Book").
Book Description
This introductory statistics text presents a range of topics, from simple to sophisticated, in clear, logical language with relevant research examples that motivates students so they always understand why they are learning the material and its relationship to their further work in the field.
Customer Reviews:
A sound, well written and fundamental undergraduate book on Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences........2007-05-13
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Narrative statistics.......2005-10-15
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.
stats for behavioral sciences.......2000-06-27
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
Book Description
Generalizability theory offers an extensive conceptual framework and a powerful set of statistical procedures for characterizing and quantifying the fallibility of measurements. It liberalizes classical test theory, in part through the application of analysis of variance procedures that focus on variance components. As such, generalizability theory is perhaps the most broadly defined measurement model currently in existence. It is applicable to virtually any scientific field that attends to measurements and their errors, and it enables a multifacteted perspective on measurement error and its components. This book provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of generalizability theory. In addition, it provides a synthesis of those parts of the statistical literature that are directly applicable to generalizability theory. The principal intended audience is measurement practitioners and graduate students in the behavioral and social sciences, although a few examples and references are provided from other fields. Readers will benefit from some familiarity with classical test theory and analysis of variance, but the treatment of most topics does not presume specific background. Robert L. Brennan is E.F. Lindquist Professor of Educational Measurement at the University of Iowa. He is an acknowledged expert in generalizability theory, has authored numerous publications on the theory, and has taught many courses and workshops on generalizability. The author has been Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association and President of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). He has received NCME Awards for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Educational Measurement and Career Contributions to Educational Measurement.
Book Description
This book develops an intuitive understanding of IRT principles through the use of graphical displays and analogies to familiar psychological principles. It surveys contemporary IRT models, estimation methods, and computer programs. Polytomous IRT models are given central coverage since many psychological tests use rating scales.
Ideal for clinical, industrial, counseling, educational, and behavioral medicine professionals and students familiar with classical testing principles, exposure to material covered in first-year graduate statistics courses is helpful. All symbols and equations are thoroughly explained verbally and graphically.
Customer Reviews:
Good intro.......2003-06-02
The book does a good job of introducing IRT. The best chapters are the explainations of parameter estimation (i.e., maximization methods). The only bad part is that they do not adequetly discuss DIF of CAT.
Customer Reviews:
Good basic, non-quantitative approach marred by some errors.......2007-03-01
The good news:
This book is a comprehensive treatment of psychometrics, including CTT, IRT and G Theory, foundations, applications, and even including topics like writing items or legal issues (e.g., ADA).
And the book does a great job of treating a dauntingly quantitative topic without using very much math.
The bad news:
The "no-math" approach makes the book quite shallow and unsuitable for serious undergraduate or graduate courses focused on psychometrics. The book should suffice for students who will only be test consumers (but then many of the topics are extraneous).
Also, Osterlind has a large vocabulary of exotic words which he sprinkles into his sometimes convoluted sentences; a short example: "The instruments come long after the philosophical--ontological--conceit is firmly made." p. 55.
And sometimes he's wrong: "CAT is a sort of catchall term meaning that an appraisal is presented on a computer to an examinee in various ways and for different purposes." (p. 456) or on pp. 83-84 in equations 3.28-3.33 he defines SEM incorrectly.
Book Description
This edited volume gives a new and integrated introduction to item response models (predominantly used in measurement applications in psychology, education, and other social science areas) from the viewpoint of the statistical theory of generalized linear and nonlinear mixed models. The new framework allows the domain of item response models to be co-ordinated and broadened to emphasize their explanatory uses beyond their standard descriptive uses.
The basic explanatory principle is that item responses can be modeled as a function of predictors of various kinds. The predictors can be (a) characteristics of items, of persons, and of combinations of persons and items; (b) observed or latent (of either items or persons); and they can be (c) latent continuous or latent categorical. In this way a broad range of models is generated, including a wide range of extant item response models as well as some new ones. Within this range, models with explanatory predictors are given special attention in this book, but we also discuss descriptive models. Note that the term "item responses" does not just refer to the traditional "test data," but are broadly conceived as categorical data from a repeated observations design. Hence, data from studies with repeated observations experimental designs, or with longitudinal designs, may also be modelled.
The book starts with a four-chapter section containing an introduction to the framework. The remaining chapters describe models for ordered-category data, multilevel models, models for differential item functioning, multidimensional models, models for local item dependency, and mixture models. It also includes a chapter on the statistical background and one on useful software. In order to make the task easier for the reader, a unified approach to notation and model description is followed throughout the chapters, and a single data set is used in most examples to make it easier to see how the many models are related. For all major examples, computer commands from the SAS package are provided that can be used to estimate the results for each model. In addition, sample commands are provided for other major computer packages.
Paul De Boeck is Professor of Psychology at K.U. Leuven (Belgium), and Mark Wilson is Professor of Education at UC Berkeley (USA). They are also co-editors (along with Pamela Moss) of a new journal entitled Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives. The chapter authors are members of a collaborative group of psychometricians and statisticians centered on K.U. Leuven and UC Berkeley.
From the reviews:
"[It is] full of nice features to make it widely useable by practitioners and applied statisticians alike, and it does a wonderful job connecting psychometrics to the field of statisitcs." Deniz Senturk for Technometrics, November 2006
"This book seeks to generalize the typical perspective on item response models, putting the ideas into a broader statistical context. … The authors have made a good job of integrating the various contributions, and I believe the book will help in increasing awareness of the potential of these types of models." (D.J.Hand, Short Book Reviews Publication of the International Statistical Institute, Vol. 25 (1), 2005)
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Consciousness & Thought
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Pediatric Disorders of Regulation in Affect and Behavior: A Therapist's Guide to Assessment and Treatment (Practical Resources for the Mental Health Professional) ... for the Mental Health Professional)
Using SPSS for Windows and Macintosh: Analyzing and Understanding Data (5th Edition)
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Assessment and Treatment of Childhood Problems: A Clinician's Guide
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