Essentials of Behavioral Research: Methods and Data Analysis

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money on this
Review: My background in statistics was not very helpful to understand this awfully soporific, pedantic book : it inflicts on you hundreds of references pages after pages. Not a single chapter is ended with exercises. To my misfortune I had it as a mandatory textbook in an Information System course at NJIT -- imposed by an unscrupulous "distinguished professor", whose background is sociology, as a favor to the authors, apparently.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and comprehensive text
Review: This is one of the most comprehensive and clearly written textbooks for graduate level behavior science methods I have come across. I learned from this book myself and, now as a professor, I will be using it in my graduate class.

Rating:
Summary: The Grand Daddy of Methods Books
Review: This is the one that you'll keep after the class is over. You'll come across some odd methodological issue 5 years after you buy the book and it'll be in there, explained perfectly. The section on interpretation of interactions is particularly great. You can't learn more about power and meta-analysis more efficiently than by reading the relevant chapters in here. The ethics chapter is more entertaining than anything like it in any other text. I've been teaching from this book for 9 years and still get students calling saying thanks for making them buy it.

Rating:
Summary: The Grand Daddy of Methods Books
Review: This is the one that you'll keep after the class is over. You'll come across some odd methodological issue 5 years after you buy the book and it'll be in there, explained perfectly. The section on interpretation of interactions is particularly great. You can't learn more about power and meta-analysis more efficiently than by reading the relevant chapters in here. The ethics chapter is more entertaining than anything like it in any other text. I've been teaching from this book for 9 years and still get students calling saying thanks for making them buy it.