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psychometrikavol. 81, no. 4, 11721176 December 2016doi: 10.1007/s11336-016-9539-4
A CREATION NARRATIVE FOR THE PSYCHOMETRIC SOCIETY AND PSYCHOMETRIKA: IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS PAUL HORST
Willem Heiser
LEIDEN UNIVERSITY
Lawrence Hubert
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
A review is provided for the creation of the Psychometric Society in 1935, and the establishment of its journal, Psychometrika, in 1936. This document is part of the 80th anniversary celebration for Psychometrikas founding, held during the annual meeting of the Psychometric Society in July of 2016 in Asheville, NC.
Key words: blind reviewing, principal components, Journal of Educational Psychology, Psychometric Corporation.
There are four published sources available that can help develop a coherent account of the formation of the Psychometric Society (1935) and the founding of its journal, Psychometrika (1936):
(1) Dunlap, J. W. (1942). The Psychometric SocietyRoots and powers. Psychometrika, 7, 18. Jack Dunlap was the sixth President of the Society; this was his Presidential Address (given September 4, 1941). Dunlap is considered one of the founding group of six: Jack Dunlap; Paul Horst; Albert Kurtz; Marion Richardson; John Stalnaker; and Leon Thurstone. In the 1930s and 1940s, Dunlap was a co-editor (for technical material) of the Journal of Educational Psychology (JEdP); rather surprisingly, JEdP was the only place to publish the type of quantitative work that Psychometrika would eventually solicit. As Dunlap states in the article listed below in (2) (1961, p. 66):
The speaker [Dunlap] was approached because of his knowledge and the volume of technical material available to him as editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology, the only outlet of consequence at that time for such articles.
(2) Dunlap, J. W. (1961). PsychometricsA special case of the Brahman theory. Psychometrika, 26, 6571. As part of the Societys twenty-fth anniversary, the Chairman of the Program Committee for that year, Charles Wrigley, asked Jack Dunlap to review the early history of the organization and discuss something of its achievements to date. This second paper is the result of that invitation.
(3) Horst, P., & Stalnaker, J. (1986). Present at the birth. Psychometrika, 51, 36. The third published source we have for the founding of the Society and journal are actually notes drafted by Bert Green on the occasion of the ftieth anniversary. Following the annual banquet for the...