History and Context
I entered graduate school at the University of Georgia in a doctoral program called Measurement and Human Differences in the psychology department. William A. Owens, PhD, a fellow of Div. 5 and a former president of Div. 14 (now the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, or SIOP) was my advisor. The program director was Lyle Schoenfeldt, PhD, a former president of Div. 5 as well. After completing my master’s work, I had planned to work with another professor, Joseph Hammock, who had been a long-time psychology department chair and a university vice president for instruction at the University of Georgia. My interests fit his, and I spent a considerable amount of time with him as I was interested in his early work on criterion-referenced testing, which is cited in Glaser’s (1963) American Psychologist article that is often referenced as the birth of criterion-referenced testing. Hammock engaged in one of those rare behaviors that changed my life for the better. He told me that he was taking the position as vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost of the University of Georgia System the following year, and he shared this information with me prior to his telling his departmental colleagues. Therefore, he asked me not to tell others, especially other faculty or students. He knew that I might change graduate schools to best meet my needs given the interests of other faculty in the program and I ultimately did so. It was a rare event of trust for a professor to a graduate student. I then did switch to the Pennsylvania State University, where I earned my doctoral degree. I have always appreciated the trust Dr. Hammock placed in me. I switched graduate schools on the basis of this conversation, and it impacted my career and life in a number of positive ways. And, I had a great educational experience at Penn State. I consider myself unbelievably fortunate to have had courses from the likes of Paul Baltes, Roger Blashfield, Paul Games, John Nesselroade and even Karl Jöreskog, and to have had an internship at Educational Testing Service, where I met and worked with such luminaries as Harry Harman, Samuel Messick and Warren Willingham.
After earning my degree at Penn State, I began working at Fordham University’s psychology department as an assistant professor some 42 years ago this fall. The search committee that hired me included three members of the doctoral program in psychometrics as well as two additional departmental faculty members. The person who was being replaced, however, was given an abnormally critical role in my hiring; it was Anne Anastasi, a former Div.5 president as well as a former APA president, who moved to a one-half-time position the year I began. (I found out years later that she had rejected the five previous people who interviewed for the position, in part because she thought that they were too psychometrically oriented and not psychologically oriented enough.) During my entire 15 full-time years at Fordham, including six as a department chair, I spent an hour a week with her essentially soaking in some of her wisdom as she continued coming to the department offices regularly until she was in her late 80s. (On this basis alone, I have often considered my early years there as even better than a postdoctoral experience.) She discussed with me many professional and psychological matters and became what amounts to the most important mentor of my career. Among the points that she made was the perspective that psychology and psychometrics were growing further and further apart. In fact, that argument formed the basis of her Div. 5 presidential address, later published in American Psychologist (Anastasi, 1967). It’s a paper that every student of psychological testing and psychometrics should read, as it remains incredibly relevant, in fact, perhaps even more relevant than it was back then, and testing and psychology have, in my opinion, become even more separated than they were 50-some years ago.
In many of the psychometrics programs today, one can graduate with scant content related to what it is we actually measure. Students are often taught how to validate tests, to check their reliability, to determine how to score them using elaborate models, to equate and link tests, to check whether test components (e.g., items) function differentially across groups (or are biased), for example, and to use a host of statistical procedures, but they are not taught the nature of the psychological content in tests. I could not do the editing and psychometric work I do at Buros if I did not know both psychometrics and something about the psychological, educational and other characteristics that we assess. I did not write the above comments because I foolishly believe many members of Div. 5 are interested in my personal history. It rather has two rationales. First, I certainly agree with Anne Anastasi that testing is moving away from psychology, if it is not already too far afield. Is this happening in other areas of quantitative and qualitative psychology? I cannot answer this question, but ask others to consider the question. Doing so, in my opinion, is a mistake and may be a reason why so many programs related to testing have moved from psychology departments to education colleges. Psychology has the capacity to change lives and change society, but only if it is based on strong theories with empirical support. Psychological testing too can be remarkably useful, but if used inappropriately or in an invalid manner, can lead to adverse results. Only through scientifically valid determinations can we discern proper uses from improper ones, whether we are talking about quantitative procedures, qualitative methods or psychological tests. I worked years ago on a document enumerating the rights and responsibilities of test takers. One of the most common comments related to the rights of test takers was that they have the right to be assessed only by valid measures. The second rationale for telling about some life experiences is to illustrate that individual people have the capacity to change the lives of others. That comment of course shows my educational bias, but I was positively impacted by a number of individuals and I see their impact in my work more than 40 years later. We can all impact others in remarkably beneficial ways!
Mini-conference in March 2020: Social Justice Theme
Some members may know that the Division Executive Committee meets once at the APA convention and once more each spring. For the last half-decade or so, on the day before the spring executive committee meeting we have had a day-long mini-conference. I understand that three years ago, President Joe Rodgers held a mini-conference on the teaching of statistics. Two years ago, President Amy Schmidt ran a mini-conference on the topic of testing and assessment generally, although a wide variety of presentations were made. This past spring, Immediate Past-President David Mackinnon organized a super program on experimental methodology in honor of the retirement of Leona Aiken, who certainly deserved to be recognized as one of the division’s longtime most valuable persons and perhaps one of the greatest teachers of statistical methodology, if not the best. Many of her former students came back to describe their current research projects, and there was a level of personal warmth and respect that only the qualitative researchers in the audience were really able to observe accurately. This next year I have organized a conference and have already approximately a dozen presenters who have agreed to speak. I tried to select a topic related to a long-term concern of the division, one which is timely, and one that combined a social justice theme with expertise in the division. I believe that psychology has become much more interested in social justice than it was some 40 years ago. I have entitled the conference, “College Admissions: Can It be Valid, Fair, and Honest?” This mini-conference will be held on March 27, 2020 in Lincoln, Nebraska. At the recent executive committee gathering at the APA conference in Chicago, committee members were excited with the theme and presenters for the proposed mini-conference, and the Executive Council questioned whether we should open this up for others to attend at a moderate price. May I ask members to let me know what they think about this possibility? Would it be of interest more broadly? It would provide us with a chance to become better known, to provide our expertise to a thorny societal problem, to educate admissions counselors and others, and perhaps to make some money for the division. We could probably also video record the presentations and make them available on the web. I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter and promise to consider your thoughts carefully. If you wish to share them with me, please send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you about the mini-conference and anything else you wish to share with me.
Kurt F. Geisinger
References
Anastasi, A. (1967). Psychology, psychologists, and psychological testing. American Psychologist, 22, 297-306. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0024521
Glaser, R. (1963). Instructional technology and the measurement of learning outcomes: Some questions. American Psychologist, 18, 519-521. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0049294