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Roderick Peter McDonald, born on April 16, 1928, in Sydney, Australia, completed a Master of Science degree in Physics (1950) at the University of Sydney. While working as a physicist he returned to study for an Arts degree, receiving an Honors degree in Psychology (1958) and the University Medal. In 1963, while teaching Experimental Psychology at the University of New England (in Northern New South Wales) he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on nonlinear factor analysis, published in 1965 as Psychometric Monograph No. 15--a first attempt at a unified account of factor models and item-response models. The continuing aim of his work has been to give a unified, general account of psychometric theory. In 1969 he was invited to join the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, there doing further work on measurement models and structural equation models. He returned to Sydney in 1981, to the School of Education, Macquarie University. He was elected president of the Psychometric Society in 1984, and in 1990, based on his psychometric publications to that date, he received a Doctor of Science degree from Macquarie University. In 1991 he accepted an invitation to join the Quantitative Division of the Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At the 2001 meeting of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology he received the Sells award for Outstanding Career Contributions to Multivariate Experimental Psychology and was also elected president of the society. In 2004 he retired home to Sydney, where he is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois and Macquarie University. A Festschrift in his honor, “Contemporary Psychometrics,” ed. Albert Maydeu-Olivares and Jack McArdle, was published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in 2005. |
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Kurt F. Geisinger is currently Director of the Buros Center on Testing and W. C. Meierhenry Distinguished University Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska. He has previously been Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Fordham University, Professor of Psychology and Dean at SUNY-Oswego, Professor of Psychology and Academic Vice President at LeMoyne College and Professor of Psychology and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of St. Thomas, in Houston, TX. His primary interests lie in validity theory, admissions testing, proper test use, the use of tests with individuals with disabilities, the testing of language minorities and the translation or adaptation of tests from one language and culture to another. He has been an APA delegate and chair of the Joint Committee on Testing Practices (1992-1996), a member of APA’s Committee on Psychological Testing and Assessment, Chair of NCME’s Professional Development and Training Committee, Co-chair of NCME’s Program Committee (1994), Chair of the Graduate Record Examination Board, Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Graduate Record Examination, a member of the SAT Advisory Committee, a member of NCME’s Ad Hoc Committee to Develop a Code of Ethical Standards Committee, and numerous other ad hoc task forces and panels. He is presently editor of Applied Measurement in Education, and is currently or has served on the editorial committees for the International Journal of Testing, Educational and Psychological Measurement, the College Board Review, Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, Psychological Assessment, Practical Assessment: Research and Evaluation, the Journal of Educational Research and Improving College and University Teaching. He has edited or co-edited the Psychological Testing of Hispanics and Test Interpretation and Diversity, both with APA books. |
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Kristopher J. Preacher is an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Psychology at the University of Kansas. His research focuses primarily on the use of latent variable methodology to analyze multivariate longitudinal data. One facet of Dr. Preacher's research concentrates on improving our ability to test complex hypotheses about causal relations using multivariate data. For example, Dr. Preacher has developed new ways of testing hypotheses about moderated mediation, multiple mediators, and multilevel mediation, and has made these developments accessible to applied researchers through online software. A second facet of Dr. Preacher's research involves model evaluation and selection. After appropriate models are constructed to test theoretical predictions, models are evaluated or sometimes ranked in terms of fit and generalizability. The practice of model selection is crucial to the progress of science. However, little is known about the factors that determine the success or failure of a given model, or about the factors that influence the relative success of rival models. Dr. Preacher's research involves improving model evaluation and comparison methods in the context of structural equation modeling. At the University of Kansas, Dr. Preacher is actively involved in graduate student advising, and teaches courses on structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, factor analysis, and nonparametric statistics. He currently directs methodological programming for the annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, and is a member of APA, APS, the Psychometric Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. |
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Hsiu-Ting Yu obtained her PhD in quantitative psychology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Her dissertation, titled “Multilevel Latent Markov Model for Nested Longitudinal Discrete Data,” was under the direction of Dr. Carolyn J. Anderson. The multilevel latent Markov model (MLMM) unifies the temporal and structural dependency in longitudinal data into a multilevel modeling framework, and provides an integrated methodology and estimation tools for studying transitions between latent states. For this work, she has also won the 2008 AERA Mary Catherine Ellwein Outstanding Quantitative Dissertation Award. Hsiu-Ting is originally from Taiwan where she received a bachelor's degree in Psychology from National Taiwan University. While she was a graduate student at the UIUC, she also earned a master's degree in Statistics and a master's degree in Psychology. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of Psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she is working on the project “Modeling individual differences in change.” After completing her post-doctoral fellowship, Hsiu-Ting plans to pursue an academic career in research and teaching in the United States. Her general research interests are developments and applications of quantitative methods for analyzing longitudinal categorical data. She is especially interested in unifying the methodology of latent class modeling, latent Markov modeling and multilevel modeling to measure and study changes. In her leisure time, she enjoys cooking, photography, traveling or simply being with family and friends. |