An Updated Content Analysis of Introductory Psychology Textbooks

Logical versus Empirical Estimates of Readability and Human Interest of General Psychology Textbooks

“…Previous studies (Gillen, 1973;Quereshi & Sackett, 1977) found positive correlation between the Flesch measures of readability and human interest. In the present study, the correlation between the Flesch ratings of readability for the two paragraphs combined and the Flesch scores of human interest for the two paragraphs combined, for the 61 textbooks, was found to be ,415 (df = 59; p<.01), and the correlation between the Flesch readability scores of the entire textbookand theFlesch ratings of human interest of the entire textbook, for 61 textbooks, was ,517 (df = 59; p<.01).…”

“…Oneoption that has been employed frequently requires computing the logical estimates of readability and human interest according to a procedure developed by Flesch (1948Flesch ( ,1951. Many textbooks have been scored using Flesch's formulas, including texts designed For introductory psychology (Gillen, 1973(Gillen, , 1975Quereshi & Zulli, 1975;Quereshi & Sackett, 1977), educational psychology (Hofmann & Vyhonsky, 1975), behavior therapy (Kendall, Finch, & Gillen, 1976), developmental psychology (Feldstein, 1977), and social psychology (Gillen, Kendall, & Finch, 1977). Landrigan and Palladino (1974), however, have questioned the goodness of Flesch's readability and human interest scores in comparison with the empirical estimates provided by the readers.…”

Improving Textbook Selection

“…Recent examinations of introductory psychology and educational psychology textbooks demonstrate the problem. In their content analysis of introductory psychology textbooks, Quereshi and Sackett (1977) examined 60 books published between 1968and 1975. Examinations of educational psychology textbooks by Roweton and Roweton (1980) and Goetz and Chatman (1985) were based on a total of 64 textbooks published between 1969 and 1983.…”

“…For example, Quereshi and Sackett (1977) performed a content analysis of introductory psychology texts in 2,484 terms found in the subject indexes of at least 2 of the 60 books. Factor analysis techniques revealed 10 principal components that replicated factors identified in a previous study (Quereshi & Zulli, 1975), proved readily interpretable, and correlated with external variables (e.g., number of pages of text, human interest measures).…”

“…First, a quick, inexpensive, objective screening procedure such as the textbook search reduction procedure (Goetz & Chatman, 1985), survey reviews (Morris, 1977), or content analysis (Quereshi & Sackett, 1977) are used to identify a small subset for further consideration from all available textbooks. Second.…”