Frank L. Schmidt

Frank L. Schmidt is an American psychology professor known for his work in personnel selection and employment testing. Schmidt is a researcher in the area of industrial and organizational psychology with the most number of publications in the two major journals in the 1980s. In the 1990's he was the 4th most published researcher.

He is well known for his research on the development and application of validity generalization methods. These methods estimate the predictive validity of employment tests. This research has demonstrated that these validities generalize across organizations and job settings. Schmidt also developed psychometric meta-analysis methods used in a wide variety of research areas. He also testifies as an expert witness specializing in employment selection.

Career
Schmidt earned his BA in Psychology from Bellarmine College in 1966, then attended Purdue University to study industrial psychology, earning an M.S. in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1970. From 1970 to 1973 he was Assistant Professor of Industrial Psychology, Michigan State University, fall 1970 to spring 1973, earning tenure and serving as an Associate Professor until 1974. He was Research Professor of Industrial Psychology at George Washington University from spring 1976 to fall 1985. During that time he was Visiting Professor, Australian Graduate School of Management, Sydney, Australia, in 1982. Schmidt is currently the Ralph L. Sheets Professor of Human Resources, Department of Management and Organizations, at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1985.

He authored an important and widely-cited textbook on Meta-Analysis with John E. Hunter titled Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings.

In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal.

Awards and recognition

 * Elected Fellow of APA and Division 14, 1979; Fellow Div. 5, 1983.
 * Elected President of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association. Division of Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics. Term: 1993-1994.
 * Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award (with John Hunter) from the American Psychological Association, 1995.
 * Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award (with John Hunter) from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1995.
 * Heneman Distinguished Career Award for Research Contributions to Human Resources. Academy of Management, Human Resources Division, 1995.
 * Distinguished Career Achievement Award for Contributions to Research Methods, Academy of Management, Research Methods Division, 2002.
 * Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior for 2002. Awarded by Academy of Management, Organizational Behavior Division, 2003.
 * Co-recipient (along with Marc Orlitzky and Sara Rynes) of the 2004 Moskowitz Prize for the best quantitative study on investment and social responsibility. (This is an award in the area of Finance.)
 * Recipient of the Michael Losey Human Resource Award, 2005. From the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). $50,000 Award.
 * Recipient of the Career Achievement Award, 2006. From the Association of Test Publishers (ATP).
 * Recipient of James McKeen Cattell Award for Scientific Contributions to Applied Psychology. 2007. From the Association for Psychological Science.

He has served on the editorial boards of


 * Psychological Methods (2004 to present)
 * Journal of Applied Psychology (1974 - 2002)
 * Human Resource Management Review (6/91 to present)
 * Quantitative Series in the Social Sciences (Sage), (1994 to present)
 * International Journal of Selection and Assessment (2001 to present)
 * Organizational Behavior and Human Performance (8/74 to 4/84)
 * Academy of Management Journal (9/75 to 4/77)
 * Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1973-1975)

Students have included Deniz Ones (UMN), Vish Viswesvaran (FIU), Mike McDaniel (VCU), Ken Pearlman, and Huy Le (UCF), In-Sue Oh (Iowa), Jonathan Shaffer (Iowa).

Selected bibliography
He (co)authored about 170 research papers in journals and presented at the academic conferences about 300 times. His work has been cited more than 8,000 times as of 2006. He is still active in teaching and research.
 * Schmidt FL Statistical significance testing and cumulative knowledge in psychology: Implications for training. (PDF) Psychological Methods, 1996.
 * Schmidt FL, Hunter JE. Development of a general solution to the problem of validity generalization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1977