Psychological and Social Measurement The Career and Contributions of Benjamin D. Wright

Mark Wilson is a professor of Education at UC, Berkeley, and also at the University of Melbourne.  He received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago in 1984, working with Ben Wright. His interests focus on measurement and applied statistics, and he has published over 100 refereed articles in those areas, and over 50 invited chapters. In 2011, he was elected president of the Psychometric Society, and, in 2016 President of the US National Council for Measurement in Education (NCME); he is also a Member of the US National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association, and a National Associate of the US National Research Council. He is Director of the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center. His research interests focus on the development and application of sound approaches for measurement in education and the social sciences, the development of statistical models suitable for measurement contexts, the creation of instruments to measure new constructs, and scholarship on the philosophy of measurement.

William P. Fisher, Jr. received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, where he was mentored by Benjamin D. Wright and supported by a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship. Dr. Fisher is recognized for contributions to measurement theory and practice that span the full range from the philosophical to the applied in fields as diverse as special education, mindfulness practice, clinical chemistry, and survey research. His articles have appeared in journals spanning a similarly wide range of fields, from education and psychology to nursing and occupational therapy to physics and metrology. Dr. Fisher’s entry on metrology and measurement in the 2011 World Standards Day paper competition won third prize, which is notable given the focus on engineering and natural science topics usually emphasized by the competition sponsors, SES, the Society for Standards Professionals, and the US National Institute for Standards and Technology. In efforts toward this same end of fostering more informed dialogue between the natural and social sciences, Fisher began contributing in 2008 to an ongoing conference hosted by the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO) on the human and social value of measurement. Work in this area ultimately led to an IMEKO Joint Symposium co-hosted by Fisher and Mark Wilson at UC Berkeley in August 2016.