Behavioral Science in Medicine introduces medical students to the science of human behavior. Organized to mirror the behavioral science/psychiatry course taught in the first two years, this text effectively teaches the major concepts of this complex subject and prepares students for board exams. The Second Edition is appropriate for courses in Behavioral Science alone but also for courses that merge Behavioral Science and Neuroscience. The increased depth of coverage of psychiatric illness, substance abuse, and pediatric psychiatry, also makes the Second Edition appropriate for use in Clinical Psychiatry courses in the third and fourth year.
This book is the product of many years' experience teaching behavioral science in a way that demonstrates its relevance to clinical medicine. We have been guided by the reactions and evaluations of many first-year medical students. The result is a conceptual framework different from those that we and others had tried before. Because the clinical relevance of knowledge about human behavior is less apparent to many first-year students than that of the other traditional pre clinical courses, books and courses organized as brief introductions to psychology, sociology, and behavioral neurology have often been poorly received. Various medical schools and texts have explored ways to overcome this difficulty. One text organizes the presentation around very practical problems which are of unmistakable interest to the future physician: the therapeutic relationship, death and dying, sexuality, and pain, to give a few examples. Another emphasizes stages of development, periods of the human life cycle, as its organizing principle. Both of these approaches have merit and have been used successfully in various schools. They seem to us, however, to have a potentially serious shortcoming. They focus student attention too much on the more immediately intriguing issues of specific clinical problems or on the more easily recognized age specific behavioral issues. In the limited time available, the teaching of general principles of human behavioral functioning may then be neglected.
This mid-level book introduces and explains statistical concepts and principles clearly, assuming minimal mathematical sophistication but avoiding a "cookbook" approach. The book also presents a broader outlook on hypothesis testing by including such often-neglected concepts as statistical power, indices and other techniques.
This book offers beginning researchers in psychology and education with limited statistics backgrounds a practical, hands-on guide to the preparation, assessment, and development of quantitative research instruments. With the explicit goal in mind of making the text accessible to readers with only a beginning level of statistical expertise, the authors include numerous examples and figures to illustrate necessary concepts and procedures, while minimizing jargon. The book includes an appendix with directions for the required statistical analyses for readers with access to SPSS. The organization of the book into two sections, theoretical and practical, with complementary chapters in each section, results in a practical and versatile resource to have in a variety of contexts. Because of its versatility, the book may be used either as a textbook for courses on test construction and instrument design or quantitative research methods in psychology and education, as a reference for researchers using and constructing quantitative instruments, or as background reading for professionals in related fields.
In addition to learning how to apply classic statistical methods, students need to understand when these methods perform well, and when and why they can be highly unsatisfactory. Modern Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences illustrates how to use R to apply both standard and modern methods to correct known problems with classic techniques. Numerous illustrations provide a conceptual basis for understanding why practical problems with classic methods were missed for so many years, and why modern techniques have practical value. Designed for a two-semester, introductory course for graduate students in the social sciences, this text introduces three major advances in the field: Early studies seemed to suggest that normality can be assumed with relatively small sample sizes due to the central limit theorem. However, crucial issues were missed. Vastly improved methods are now available for dealing with non-normality. The impact of outliers and heavy-tailed distributions on power and our ability to obtain an accurate assessment of how groups differ and variables are related is a practical concern when using standard techniques, regardless of how large the sample size might be. Methods for dealing with this insight are described. The deleterious effects of heteroscedasticity on conventional ANOVA and regression methods are much more serious than once thought. Effective techniques for dealing heteroscedasticity are described and illustrated. Requiring no prior training in statistics, Modern Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences provides a graduate-level introduction to basic, routinely used statistical techniques relevant to the social and behavioral sciences. It describes and illustrates methods developed during the last half century that deal with known problems associated with classic techniques. Espousing the view that no single method is always best, it imparts a general understanding of the relative merits of various techniques so that the choice of method can be made in an informed manner.
Do you find statistics overwhelming and confusing? Have you ever wished for someone to explain the basics in a clear and easy-to-follow style? This accessible textbook gives a step-by-step introduction to all the topics covered in introductory statistics courses for the behavioural sciences, with plenty of examples discussed in depth, based on real psychology experiments utilising the statistical techniques described. Advanced sections are also provided, for those who want to learn a particular topic in more depth. Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences: An Introduction begins with an introduction to the basic concepts, before providing a detailed explanation of basic statistical tests and concepts such as descriptive statistics, probability, the binomial distribution, continuous random variables, the normal distribution, the Chi-Square distribution, the analysis of categorical data, t-tests, correlation and regression. This timely and highly readable text will be invaluable to undergraduate students of psychology, and students of research methods courses in related disciplines, as well as anyone with an interest in the basic concepts and tests associated with statistics in the behavioural sciences.
A clearly written, introductory psychiatric text guided by the current Institute of Medicine domains and including national board-style review questions.
The definitive introduction to the behavioral insights approach, which applies evidence about human behavior to practical problems. Our behavior is strongly influenced by factors that lie outside our conscious awareness, although we tend to underestimate the power of this “automatic” side of our behavior. As a result, governments make ineffective policies, businesses create bad products, and individuals make unrealistic plans. In contrast, the behavioral insights approach applies evidence about actual human behavior—rather than assumptions about it—to practical problems. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, written by two leading experts in the field, offers an accessible introduction to behavioral insights, describing core features, origins, and practical examples. These insights have opened up new ways of addressing some of the biggest challenges faced by societies, changing the way that governments, businesses, and nonprofits work in the process. This book shows how the approach is grounded in a concern with practical problems, the use of evidence about human behavior to address those problems, and experimentation to evaluate the impact of the solutions. It gives an overview of the approach's origins in psychology and behavioral economics, its early adoption by the UK's pioneering “nudge unit,” and its recent expansion into new areas. The book also provides examples from across different policy areas and guidance on how to run a behavioral insights project. Finally, the book outlines the limitations and ethical implications of the approach, and what the future holds for this fast-moving area.
Behavioral sciences for the next generation of health care providers – including practical features such as chapter review questions and an annotated practice exam. The fourth edition of The Behavioral Sciences and Health Care is an invaluable resource for those educating the next generation of physicians and other health care providers. This easy-to-use text presents succinct information about a wide variety of neurological, social, and psychological sciences from a unified perspective of the complex evolutionary processes of gene–individual–environmental interaction, breathing new life into the biopsychosocial model so essential to understanding human behavior. The book is organized in sections covering Regulatory Systems, Basic and Higher Order Homeostatic Systems, Development Through the Life Cycle, Social and Cultural Issues, Societal and Behavioral Health Challenges, The Health Care System, Policy, and Economics; The Clinical Relationship; and Psychopathology. In this edition,numerous chapters have been extensively revised to include the most up-to-date information and to integrate the DSM-5 classification. A new chapter deals with pain and a new appendix on psychological testing has been added. Each chapter begins with guidance questions and ends with current recommended readings, resources, and review questions. A complete 335 question-and-answer multiple choice USMLE-type exam section not only allows readers to assess how well they have learned the material, but also highlights important points and adds additional specific information to supplement the text. This text is particularly suited for use in systems-based and casebased curricula that can be used creatively in flipped classrooms and other active learning environments. Accessible and clear, without oversimplification, the book facilitates interdisciplinary education, providing a common core of knowledge applicable in many fields, including medicine, nursing, psychology, and social work.
