Samuel J. Messick III (April 3, 1931 – October 6, 1998) was an American psychologist who worked for the

Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, Lawrence Township, New Jersey, b ...

(ETS), known for his contributions to validity theory.

Early life

Messick was born on April 3, 1931 in Philadelphia. He graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, where he earned a bachelor's degree, and he earned a PhD from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

Career

Messick worked as a psychologist for the

(ETS). He examined

construct validity Construct validity concerns how well a set of indicators represent or reflect a concept that is not directly measurable. ''Construct validation'' is the accumulation of evidence to support the interpretation of what a measure reflects.Polit DF Beck ...

. Messick influenced language testing in 2 main ways: in proposing a new understanding of how inferences made based on tests must be challenged, and in drawing attention to the consequences of test use.

Death and legacy

Messick resided in

Pennington, New Jersey Pennington is a borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. The borough is located at the cross-roads between the Delaware Valley region to the south and the Raritan Valley region to the north. As of the 2010 United States Census, ...

. He died on October 6, 1998 in Philadelphia, at 67. The Quantitative and Qualitative Methods division (Division 5) of the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

created the Samuel J. Messick Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award to honor Messick's contributions. Douglas N. Jackson, a previous collaborator of Messick, earned the award in 2004.

Works

* (ed. with Harold Gulliksen) ''Psychological scaling: theory and applications; report of a conference''. New York: Wiley, 1960. * (ed. with John Ross) ''Measurement in personality and cognition''. New York: Wiley, 1962. * (ed. with Silvan Tomkins) ''Computer simulation of personality: frontier of psychological theory'', New York: Wiley, 1963. * (ed. with Arthur H. Brayfield) ''Decision and choice; contributions of Sidney Siegel''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. * (ed. with Douglas N. Jackson) ''Problems in human assessment''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. * (ed.) ''Individuality in learning''. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. *(ed.) Validity. In R. L. Linn (Ed.) Educational Measurement (3rd ed., pp. 13–103). New York: Macmillan, 1989.

References

1931 births 1998 deaths People from Philadelphia People from Pennington, New Jersey University of Pennsylvania alumni Princeton University alumni 20th-century American psychologists {{US-psychologist-stub

Early life

Career

Death and legacy

Works

Further reading

References