Reviews for Essentials of Abnormal Psychology

The average rating for Essentials of Abnormal Psychology based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-21 00:00:00 Jesse Santos The book was an interesting read with plenty of case studies. I used it in a college Abnormal Psychology class. Although it took a minute to get used to reading a textbook with constant in text citations, it made it easy to look up the actual studies to use for reference in my papers. There were a few times I enjoyed reading those case studies to give more depth to the material in the book. I felt in terms of content, the text certainly covers a lot but that a few of the chapters were disproportionately shorter simply because there were less disorders under that realm to discuss. It was great in trying to provide the newest information and studies while maintaining objectivity as much as possible. I would recommend to a friend interested in abnormal psychology if not for the mandatory overpriced access card. The access card was severely disappointing as much of the information in the videos were not pertinent to our particular course. The quizzes created from the same publisher as the book had some questions that were incorrect or had more than one correct answer at least 10 -15% of the time. For an online course, that is not an easily made sacrifice. I also found several questions based not to test our knowledge of the actual material, but more of a subjective viewpoint. Unlike the book, the quizzes sometimes assumed correlation is the same thing as causation which I viewed as a scientific error in reasoning. It was clear to me that Durand & Barlowe were not involved with the online content involved for this textbook as this viewpoint was not evident in the overly objective style textbook. There is a 'crossword' puzzle vocab study guide that did not work on any browser for me nor did it allow me to print it for when I was on the go. The ebook only allows temporary access from the date of purchase. The instructional videos were finicky. Freezing sometimes with very low quality, obvious pixelation, as well as getting chopped off mid-sentence in some lectures. The card offers you a wealth of information for the person casually interested, but it offers so much material (hours and hours of it) and none of it was useful in the course I took. In the past, I've used other access cards from different books and have seen a much better job elsewhere in that regard. I think it disservices the quality of the textbook in this case. The publisher would be wise to offer a permanent e-book solution available on Kindle, ipad, and Android. The book would need to be updated with new studies every few years so I see no potential loss of profit in doing this and it would be a better use of the extra money gained from forcing students to buy this useless card.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-07 00:00:00 Darrell Bell A wonderful book & as the title indicates Abnormal Psychology. Enjoyed the class and loved the teacher. I think the book really did well in explaining each abnormality with the description, symptoms, causes, treatment, and of course examples of people that would have the illness. I would buy this book and most likely will later. I did not use the CD -ROM.