ABSTRACT
The aforementioned quotes denote both the important role of the textbook in a course and the critical nature of informed textbook evaluation and selection to the course’s success. Thus, because 98% of teachers use textbooks for the introductory course (Miller & Gentile, 1998), introductory textbooks play a major role in defining psychology for our students. However, with the large number of introductory texts available, it is difficult for a teacher to know many of the books well. A survey of teachers conducted by Weiten (1988) attested to this difficulty. Weiten asked a large sample of professors who taught introductory psychology to rate each of 43 textbooks, but only 4 of 43 textbooks were rated completely by 50% or more of the respondents. Griggs and Jackson (1989) found that introductory psychology text editors and authors, like the psychology teachers, were also not very familiar with many of the available introductory texts.
