Introductory psychology textbooks (still) more different than alike

What is it about?

The content and structure of introductory psychology courses are heavily influenced by the instructor’s choice of textbook, and introductory psychology textbooks can vary widely in the specific subject material included. Consequently, students using different textbooks may not be exposed to similar content. When undergraduate readers performed a page-by-page content analysis of five popular introductory psychology textbooks, there was very little observed overlap in key term use across these five texts (Slade & Gurung, 2022). The present study replicated and expanded the previous content analysis. We used a graduate student reader to determine if a reader with additional expertise would identify more overlapping terms. We also included a more exhaustive list of chapter topics and terms which the previous study had not considered. Additionally, we used qualitative software to provide a more robust analysis. Despite these improvements in methodology, our results confirmed a lack of commonality in key term usage across these same five introductory psychology textbooks. Out of a total of 3,939 unique key terms identified, 2,697 terms (68%) were unique to a single textbook. There were 535 terms (13%), 287 terms (7%), and 235 terms (6%) appearing in two, three, and four books, respectively. Only 185 terms (5%) were common to all five. This replication confirms previous findings that introductory psychology textbooks may not share as much specific content as is commonly believed. We discuss limitations and specific future directions.

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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Introductory psychology (IP) courses provide students with a broad overview of the field of psychology and are popular courses among university students. While a paramount goal for teaching IP is to provide a general yet comprehensive look into psychology’s subfields, textbooks differ between IP courses with variations in style, tone, specificity, and depth of content. As many instructors draw heavily from textbooks for lecture content, textbook variation can be a source of potential content variance in IP courses. Consequently, knowing the extent to which textbooks vary in content is important and can influence decisions in textbook adoption, course design, and lecture content.