David Thissen

David Michael Thissen (born c. 1950) is a professor of quantitative psychology at the University of North Carolina and former President of the Psychometric Society.[1] He is a fellow at the American Statistical Association and the American Psychological Society. He is known for his contributions to item response theory.

David Thissen
Bornc. 1950 (age 70–71)
Fort Dodge, Iowa
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSaint Louis University
University of Chicago
Known forItem response theory
Unit-weighted regression
Test Scoring
AwardsAmerican Statistical Association Fellow (2006)
AERA Inaugural Fellow (2008)
NCME Career Contribution Award (2015)
Scientific career
FieldsPsychometrics
InstitutionsUniversity of Kansas
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Doctoral advisorR. Darrell Bock
Doctoral studentsBryce Reeve
Li Cai
InfluencesHoward Wainer

Early life and education

The eldest of five children, Thissen graduated from St. Edmond High School in Fort Dodge, Iowa and was a national semifinalist in the 1967 Westinghouse Science Talent Search.[2] He earned a bachelor's degree from Saint Louis University and a PhD in quantitative psychology from the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Career

Upon receiving his PhD in 1976, Thissen joined the psychology faculty at the University of Kansas and was appointed an associate professor (with tenure) five years later. He moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990 as a full professor of psychology and served as the chair of the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory until 2002. He continues to serve UNC as a full professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.

He is the author of hundreds of publications on testing and measurement, patient-reported health outcomes (PROs), human development, and statistical graphics.[3] He published Test Scoring with Howard Wainer in 2001.

He has also developed numerous psychometric software programs including Multilog and IRTPRO.[4]

Selected publications
  • David Thissen and Howard Wainer, ed. (2001). Test Scoring. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0805837663.
  • Thissen, D. (2001). "Psychometric engineering as art". Psychometrika. 66 (4): 473–485. doi:10.1007/BF02296190. S2CID 123480748.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)

References
  1. "Past, Present and Incoming Presidents". psychometricsociety.org. Psychometric Society. Retrieved 7 March 2017.
  2. The Messenger, Jan. 26, 1967 archive. Accessed March 15, 2017.
  3. Google Scholar profile. Accessed March 15, 2017.
  4. Software. Accessed March 15, 2017.
  • Vita at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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