Customer Reviews

Foundations of Behavioral Research (Kerlinger, Foundations of Behavioral Research)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are very few books written that covers as many important topics in behavioral research methods as this one. Earlier editions were outstanding and the fourth edition is exceptional. The new material in the 4th Edition is helpful to today's researcher. Both researcher and student doing research should have this book. The examples are extremely useful in facilitating the understanding of research methods and the analysis of data.

Lee gives a six star performance by improving on what was already a five star performance in the third edition before Kerlinger's death.This is a must have book for anyone planning to do statistical analysis ,not only in psychology,but in the social sciences as well(especially economics).For example,Lee points out(pp.265,863)the importance of doing some type of test for goodness of fit(Chi- Square test,etc.)BEFORE a researcher assumes that he can make use of the normal probability distribution as an approximation of the data set at hand.This has not been the case in econometric time series studies of (a) financial markets(financial economics,portfolio analysis)or of(b) real,durable investment over the business cycle.The Black-Scholes equation and the CAPM model,both used as foundations in business finance courses in all countries worldwide, just assumes normality.The famous Keynes-Tinbergen debate about the logical foundations of econometrics in the Economic Journal of 1939-40 reveals that the founders of econometrics did not test the data correctly for normality.Keynes's comments about the necessity to demonstrate the uniformity,homogeneity,and stability of the time series data before any multiple regressions were run was ridiculed as the foolish ,out of date utterances of a once magnificient mind that had deteriorated by the late 1930's.Benoit Mandelbrot's massive data analysis,replicated by many different researchers in many different countries since the early 1970's,shows that the assumption of normality ,underlying statistical price data analysis done by economists in practically all financial markets(stocks,bonds,money,currency,exchange,commodities)over the last 60 years,is all wrong.There is one minor oversite in the fourth edition.There is no discussion of Ellsberg's paradox and/or ambiguous probabilities.Lee does ,of course, discuss Keynes's concept of the weight of the evidence and probabilities that have low weight.Both Lee and Brady had agreed 15 years ago that Keynes's w,defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1,was practically the same as Ellsberg's rho,defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1.In real life,most of the probabilities will turn out to be ambiguous(plus being underweighted).In such situations it will not be possible to treat probability according to the Kolmogorov axioms.The experimental-empirical work of Tversky-Kahneman demonstrates that the vast majority of real world decision makers are rational(contrary to the conclusion drawn from the evidence by Tversky-Kahneman)but are working with ambiguous or underweighted probabilities.

This text is a classic for students of the behavioral sciences. It is fairly exhaustive, but it has not been updated since 1999. Therefore, it could use some updating regarding technological advances and examples. The publishers would also benefit from adding online resources for the text.

Foundations of Behavioral Research by Kerlinger and Lee is one of my prescribed books, for a Research course that I am taking, as part of a Masters program.

In the course of working through the book, we (my fellow students and I), have encountered a large number of spelling, grammatical and even content errors. The book needs careful reading and editing.

However, the book has a lot to offer if you can look beyond the flaws mentioned above.

I received the Book in excellent condition and the shipping was really fast.
I really recommend these guys to purchase books from. Wonderful!

This was a textbook for one of my research method classes. Heard it was the Bible in the field. I never liked it.

The book is dated and reflects the style and more stilted vocabulary of 40 years ago. Altho tighter editing could have produced a book 200 pages shorter that would have conveyed the same information, the descriptions of theory and nomenclature are adequate; however, the authors are less than clear in attempting to get across any math concepts (Stats by DeVeaux, Velleman & Bock would be a much better choice if your goal is using the math behind the quantitative methods).