Psychology Textbooks: Examining Their Accuracy

Abstract

Sales figures and recollections of psychologists indicate textbooks play a central role in psychology students' education, yet instructors typically must select texts under time pressure and with incomplete information. Although selection aids are available, none adequately address the accuracy of texts. We describe a technique for sampling textbooks' content and evaluating accuracy. Preliminary studies indicated multiple errors in texts we examined. We present a proposed taxonomy of such errors. We speculate that errors are more likely when textbook authors use “deductive” rather than “inductive referencing,” but acknowledge that authors frequently are under pressure to use the former. Discipline-wide efforts to assess textbooks' scholarly quality could facilitate improvements in accuracy, providing fundamental benefits to the discipline.

Notes

^a It is possible for both plagiarism and “paraphragiarism” to occur in a single instance (e.g., in a single passage citing a single reference).

^b Word suggested by Levin (1992, p. 12).