Introductory Psychology Textbooks: Assessing Levels of Difficulty

Abstract

Given the importance of assessing level of difficulty for text consideration and selection, I derived level classifications for all 37 full-length introductory textbooks published from 1995 through 1997. I used only 3 parameters: eminence of the text author(s), the number of pedagogical aids used in the text, and the number of non-traditional chapters included in the text. To validate this procedure, I compared the generated classifications to independent, experientially based level judgments for 30 of the texts and to my own experientially based judgments for all of the texts. All 3 sets of level classifications were strongly positively correlated, indicating the efficacy of the 3—factor procedure. To assist teachers in making text level assessments in the future, I provide an informal judgment heuristic based on this procedure.