Re: Consulting gigs for psychometricians?

On 21 Jun 2006 21:04:06 -0700, "optionstraderjeff"
<jeffkatz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

I recently read in the news (NY Times, several others) that there is a
severe shortage of psychometricians. Is this really true? Or is it
like the manufactured "shortage" of IT people several years ago? I
googled for "consulting" and "psychometrician" but, except for a few
regular positions at the ETS, did not see much.

What I remember seeing in the NY Times was something
I mentioned a few days ago -- State governments, as well
as ETS, face a big demand for new versions of tests of
"educational achievement" in order to do all the testing
required by Bush's unfunded mandate on schools,
Leave No Child Behind.

There *should* be good psychometricians in charge of making
new versions of old tests, but I don't know how many of them
it takes. I suspect that the shortage might consist of the lack
of really-good people to take positions that -- from the outside,
at least -- sound somewhat boring to carry out, while leaving
you responsible to politicians.




I have a Ph.D. in psychometrics from the UK (Hans Eysenck was my
dissertation advisor), not to mention a deep interest in factor
analysis and in the use of genetic algorithms in statistical modeling,
and would really like to get back into that field. I am sure there
must be others in this group with similar backgrounds and interests,
who might find info on the realities of consulting in the area of
psychometrics to be of interest.

Jeff.

--
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@xxxxxxxx
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
.