PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1641211
Do Undergraduate Psychology Statistics Textbooks Make Connections to Their Underlying Epistemological Basis?
Provisionally accepted
- 1The University of Kansas Department of Educational Psychology, Lawrence, United States
- 2Sanford Harmony Institute, ASU, Tempe, AZ, United States
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Quantitative methods in psychology have been a source of controversy for decades. When misapplied or misinterpreted, they can provide a false sense of objectivity and/or lead to faulty inferences, impeding the progress of psychological research. Moreover, misunderstanding and misinterpretation of certain quantitative methods is rampant, even among trained practitioners and researchers. Epistemology is the philosophical discipline regarding how one can establish knowledge. As such, it is the foundational basis of all research methodology. This article evaluates the current state of undergraduate psychology statistics textbooks to see if they provide a proper epistemological basis necessary to support statistical reasoning. The hope is to identify opportunities to improve the methodological understanding of future generations of psychologists.
Keywords: Teaching statistics, undergraduate psychology statistics textbooks, epistemology, Post positivism, NHST
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 10 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kingston, Wilson, Quintana and Peng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Neal M Kingston, The University of Kansas Department of Educational Psychology, Lawrence, United States
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