Content Analysis of Undergraduate Psychology Textbooks / William O'Donohue.

Format:

Datafile

Contributor:

O'Donohue, William T. University of Nevada-Reno.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Series:

ICPSR (Series) ; 36966.

ICPSR ; 36966

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

2017-12-20.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Mich. : Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2017.

System Details:

Mode of access: Intranet.

data file

Summary:

Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in American universities, despite the fact that the discipline still has many unsettled questions regarding fundamental philosophical and methodological issues. These issues may be associated with a lack of clarity regarding an accurate conception of science and the nature of the relationship between psychology and science with respect to these controversies. Kuhn (1967) has suggested that scientific paradigms are transmitted in textbooks. To understand how the scientific status of psychology is depicted, 30 undergraduate textbooks were examined. Textbooks were examined on the following categories: <list type="ordered)<itm>What constitutes science is controversial</itm> <itm>Bad (Pseudo) science</itm> <itm>Second demarcation problem</itm> <itm>Deductive stance</itm> <itm>Inductive stance</itm> <itm>Verisimilitude/tentativeness of science</itm> <itm>Theory ladenness of facts</itm> <itm>The role of theory in hypothesis formation</itm> <itm>The role of competing theories (i.e. Laudan)</itm> <itm>Social constructionism (vs. natural kinds)</itm> <itm>Rhetorical views of science</itm> <itm>Science and biases (e.g., political influences)</itm> <itm>The role of ad hoc hypotheses</itm> <itm>Evolutionary epistemology</itm> <itm>Recognition of conceptual problems (i.e. is it important for science to address conceptual problems or only empirical ones?)</itm> <itm>Kuhnian paradigms</itm> <itm>Mature vs pre-paradigm sciences</itm> <itm>Strict method vs "anything goes" (i.e. Feyerabend).</itm></list> Introductory, cognitive, social, and abnormal textbooks were examined.Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36966.v1

Contents:

Dataset

Notes:

Title from ICPSR DDI metadata of 2018-06-14.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.