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Personnel Psychology

Book Review Guidelines 

(for a printable PDF of the guidelines, click here)

Mechanics

  1. Word process your review, single spacing the heading and byline, double spacing the body of the review, and single spacing any references at the end. The review should be approximately 1,250 words in length.

  2. The heading and byline should be set up as follows (note the use of bold and italics):

    Authors. Title. City: Publisher, date, pages, price, hard or softcover.

    Reviewed by Your Name, Title, Organization, Address including postal code, and Co-Reviewers Name, Title, Organization, Address including postal code.

  3. Follow modified APA style for listing references. (Refer to the References section of any research article in Personnel Psychology.)

  4. Send an e-mail to the address below with your review as an attachment in Microsoft Word format.

  5. Your review will be edited, for the sake of either space or clarity, and time may not always allow you to approve changes. Occasionally, a review may be postponed for a later issue if space runs out.

Style

  1. Write clearly and concisely, using examples from the book whenever appropriate to illustrate your points. Direct quotes should be accompanied by page numbers.

  2. Use non-technical language. Many of our readers are not trained in psychology and highly technical jargon has little meaning for them.

  3. Write to inform the reader, convince the reader of the correctness of your evaluation, and hold the reader’s attention.

Substance

  1. Provide a description of the book—its purpose and its target audience, the ground it covers, how it is organized, and so forth.

  2. Be evaluative. Express your opinion of the book. A purely descriptive review—a list of chapter headings and contributors’ names, for example—makes for dull reading and contributes little. Books reviewed in Personnel Psychology vary widely in their subject matter, target audience, scholarship, and degree of grounding in the accumulated research and wisdom of the field. Therefore, you will find it impossible to apply a common set of evaluative criteria to all works. The following are some criteria that may be relevant to your current review:
    • Importance of topic. Is this something we really care about, or is it of interest only to a few specialists who haven’t seen a real-world work place for the last 25 years?
    • Practical application. What are the implications, or usefulness, of the book for organizations, managers, workers, the general public, practitioners, teachers, or researchers?
    • Linkage with relevant research and theory. Are the author’s premises or recommendations based on rigorously accumulated data, on observation and conjecture, or on armchair reveries?
    • Up to date. Does the book make appropriate use of recent research and developments in the area?
    • Breadth and depth of scholarship. If the book is a scholarly work, does it tap the appropriate resources and draw connections with appropriate related fields?
    • Persuasiveness of the argument. Does the author convince you that the point of view presented is correct? Does the persuasiveness come from reason, passion, or some combination?
    • Organization of contents. Is the book organized in a sensible way?
    • Writing geared to the target audience. If the book is written for managers, will it grab and hold their attention? If it’s for practitioners, will they be able to connect with it? If students are the intended audience. ...
    • Liveliness of writing style. Does the author’s writing style make for interesting reading, or is this book soporific?
    • Use of relevant examples. Illustrations, cases. Are points brought to life through vivid and fitting examples, or is the author content to make a point and leave it at the conceptual level?
    • Fulfillment of expectations. Does the book deliver on what it promises in the preface or introduction, or in the publisher’s jacket blurb?
    • Physical attributes. Is the design of the book pleasing to the eye? Is the book free
      of typos and other distracting errors?
    • Sense of irony. Does the author appear to practice what is preached in the text? Is the author’s view of the subject matter and its relevance to real life sufficiently sophisticated to pass muster with the skeptical, well-read, world-weary reader?

  3. Support your criticism. Readers will not be convinced by your word alone. Provide examples and cite contrary data, theories, or experiences to support your critique.

  4. A good book review is as much a reflection of the personality of the reviewer as it is a description and evaluation of the book reviewed. Although your review should take all the above into consideration, it should above all be a reflection of your assessment of the book, with all the knowledge, experiences, and biases that you bring to that assessment.