Thelma Gwinn Thurstone (December 11, 1897 – February 12, 1993) was a

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

Career

After obtaining her master's degree in 1923, Thurstone worked for a year at the Institute for Government Research in

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before moving to

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where she worked as a statistician and created psychological tests for the

American Council on Education The American Council on Education (ACE) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. higher education association established in 1918. ACE's members are the leaders of approximately 1,700 accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities and higher education ...

(ACE). Simultaneously, she worked on a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

on the topic of

test theory In experimental physics, a test theory tells experimenters how to perform particular comparisons between specific theories or classes of theory. Without a good reference test theory, these experiments can be difficult to construct. Different theor ...

, which was submitted in 1926. She then worked with her husband,

Louis Leon Thurstone Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his cont ...

, to create tests for the ACE, write articles and book, and at the Psychometric Laboratory. In 1948, Thurstone began work as the full-time director of the Division of Child Study for Chicago's public schools. Thelma and Louis moved to

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

in 1950, where Thelma accepted a position at the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

as a professor in the Department of Education. Following the death of her husband in 1955, Thurstone took over as director of the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory for two years. Thurston continued her life-time work in curriculum development and test development that she began in Chicago as part of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at UNC, with Science Research Associates as her publisher, until she retired at the age of 85. Much of her curriculum materials were based on the multi-factor theory of intelligence developed by her and L.L. Thurstone and covered instructional materials covering a range from preschool through high school. Her "Reading for Understanding" materials were organized by ascending difficulty using multiple factor analysis to train students in reading comprehension across a range of difficulty encompassing early grades through high-school. Her curriculum materials were sold and used throughout the English-speaking world, and a small part of the early learning materials were translated into French for use in Canada. In 1979 she was awarded an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

from the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

Personal life

Thurstone was born in

Hume, Missouri Hume is a city in Bates County, Missouri, and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area within the United States. The population was 336 at the 2010 census. Geography Hume is located at (38.090514, -94.584325). According to the United Stat ...

, the eldest of three children, to parents who were both teachers. She attended the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

, graduating with a

baccalaureate Baccalaureate may refer to: * ''Baccalauréat'', a French national academic qualification * Bachelor's degree, or baccalaureate, an undergraduate academic degree * English Baccalaureate, a performance measure to assess secondary schools in England ...

degree in German in 1917, before earning a second degree in education. Thurstone went on to complete a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in psychology in 1923 from the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. Thurstone married

in 1924 who, in his autobiography, described Thelma as a "genius in test construction". The couple had three children, born between 1927 and 1932.

Research publications

*Thurstone, Thelma G. "Primary Mental Abilities of Children'." Educational and Psychological Measurement 1, no. 1 (1941): 103-115. *Thurstone, Louis Leon, and Thelma Gwinn Thurstone. "Factorial studies of intelligence." Psychometric monographs (1941). *Thurstone, Thelma G. "The difficulty of a test and its diagnostic value." Journal of Educational Psychology 23, no. 5 (1932): 335. *Thurstone, L. L., and Thelma Gwinn Thurstone. "A neurotic inventory." The Journal of Social Psychology 1, no. 1 (1930): 3-30.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thurstone, Thelma University of Chicago alumni American women psychologists 20th-century American psychologists 1897 births 1993 deaths University of Missouri alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni