David Kaplan, the Patricia Busk Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Department of Educational Psychology was elected as President of the Psychometric Society. His term will begin in July 2023 The Psychometric Society was founded in 1935 and is devoted to the advancement of quantitative methodology in the behavioral sciences. The Psychometric Society publishes the flagship journal Psychometrika which is devoted to the development of psychology as a quantitative rational science, including the advancement of theory and methodology for behavioral data analysis in psychology, education, and the social and behavioral sciences generally. Psychometrika contains articles on the development of quantitative models of psychological phenomena, as well as statistical methods and mathematical techniques for evaluating psychological and educational data. Past presidents of the Psychometric Society affiliated with UW-Madison are Dan Bolt (2019-2021) and Chester Harris (1966-1967).
More detail regarding the Psychometric Society can be found here.
Kaplan holds affiliate appointments in the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Population Health Sciences and the Center for Demography and Ecology. Kaplan’s program of research focuses on the development of Bayesian statistical methods for education research. His work on these topics is directed toward applications to large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal survey designs. Dr. Kaplan is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and has served as the chair of its Research Advisory Committee. Kaplan is a recipient of the Samuel J. Messick Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the American Psychological Association (Division 5); a past-President of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology; a fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 5); a recipient of the Alexander Von Humboldt Research Award; a fellow of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories; and was a Jeanne Griffith Fellow at the National Center for Education Statistics. He is currently the Max Kade Visiting Professor at the University of Heidelberg. Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in education from UCLA in 1987.