Benjamin Drake Wright

For Florida politician, see Benjamin D. Wright.
Benjamin Drake Wright

Ben Wright with his ruler

Benjamin D. Wright with his ruler
Born (1926-03-30)March 30, 1926
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, United States
Died October 31, 2015(2015-10-31) (aged 89)
Chicago, Illinois
Fields Physics, Psychology, Education, Psychometrics
Institutions University of Chicago
Alma mater Cornell
Doctoral advisor John R. Platt
Doctoral students Bruce H. Choppin (1940–1983) and over 100 others
Known for Rasch measurement theory, methods, estimation, models, applications
Influences Charles Townes, Leonard Jimmie Savage, Georg Rasch, Sigmund Freud
Influenced Test-, survey-, and assessment-based measurement practices in education and health care, globally
Notable awards Association of Test Publishers Career Achievement Award in Computer-Based Testing, 2001 Institute for Objective Measurement Lifetime Achievement Award, 2003

Benjamin Drake Wright (March 30, 1926 – October 25, 2015) was an American psychometrician. He is largely responsible for the widespread adoption of Georg Rasch's measurement principles and models.[1] In the wake of what Rasch referred to as Wright's “almost unbelievable activity in this field”[1] in the period from 1960 to 1972, Rasch's ideas entered the mainstream in high-stakes testing, professional certification and licensure examinations, and in research employing tests, and surveys and assessments across a range of fields. Wright's seminal contributions to measurement continued until 2001, and included articulation of philosophical principles, production of practical results and applications, software development, development of estimation methods and model fit statistics, vigorous support for students and colleagues, and the founding of professional societies and new publications.[2]

Georg Rasch and Benjamin Wright
Georg Rasch and Benjamin Wright
Benjamin Wright with a photo of Georg Rasch
Benjamin Wright with a photo of Georg Rasch

Biography

Wright was born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, on March 30, 1926. He retired in October, 2001.

Early life and education (1926–1960)

Wright’s experiences at age seven with mental testing sparked his lifelong interest in tests and test questions. Wright’s mother, Dorothy Wright (née Wadhams, 1902–1995), was a lifelong advocate of progressive education.[3] In the summer of 1933, his mother sent him to Housatonic Camp in Canaan, Connecticut, where he was individually given a battery of tests over the course of that summer. The tests were administered by teachers and staff from the Little Red School House in Greenwich Village, New York City. Wright subsequently attended Little Red over the course of grades 2 and 4 to 7. Thus, Wright's education was shaped by early advocates of integrating scientific assessment into the classroom, including Elisabeth Irwin and Bank Street College founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell.[4] At the time, the Little Red course of study was based on curricula outlined in Mitchell's Here and Now Story Book and Young Geographers.[5]

From 1940 to 1944, Wright attended The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In June 1944, at age 18, Wright enlisted in the U.S. Navy. As the result of his score on the Army Navy College Qualifying Test, Wright was assigned to the V-12 Navy College Training Program and to fulfill his military duty at Cornell University studying physics.[6] The Cornell physics faculty included Richard Feynman who, in parallel with John von Neumann, had begun adapting an IBM business punch card machine to solve the Los Alamos physicists’ linear equations more quickly.[7] This work led to the modern computer. As well as graduating with Honors from the physics program within three years, Wright's Cornell transcript shows he was awarded 87 additional credit hours “for work in the School of Electrical Engineering…under the V-12 program,” indicating the extent of Wright’s work with early computer prototypes for the US military.

In the summer of 1947, after graduating from Cornell and receiving an honorable discharge from the US Navy, Wright interned at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Charles H. Townes. Townes had begun a series of pioneering studies in microwave spectroscopy,[8] but had no budget for a laboratory assistant. Wright's contributions as an intern led to his first scientific publication, completed before he entered graduate school.[9]

In the fall of 1947, Wright enrolled as a graduate student in the University of Chicago Physics Department. In January 1948, he was hired as a research assistant to Nobel Laureate Robert S. Mulliken (1896–1986) at the University's Laboratory of Molecular Structure and Spectra. John R. Platt, known for his work on strong inference, was his supervisor and Clemens C. J. Roothaan was his lab partner. Mulliken and his colleagues made pioneering contributions to molecular orbital physics modeling electron waveforms.[10]

Wright continued work as a research assistant with Mulliken and his colleagues until 1951.[11] However, Wright’s interests extended beyond the physics laboratory. He directed a group theater for young adults at the Gads Hill Center in the Pilsen neighborhood of the Lower West Side, Chicago and he took classes from psychologist Carl Rogers and sociologist Lloyd Warner (with whom he would later work at Social Research Inc.). Wright also attended several lectures given by Louis Thurstone, a pioneer in psychological measurement and psychometrics.

Believing that understanding how children learn was even more important than understanding molecular structure, in late spring of 1948 Wright made a dramatic shift of focus. He left a major in physics to enroll in the Committee on Human Development. The Committee had been organized in 1940 by then Education Department Chair Ralph W. Tyler to promote cross disciplinary research,[12] which appealed to the young Wright. In 1951, Wright became a counselor at the Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago, then directed by Bruno Bettelheim who was also faculty on the Committee on Human Development.

During this period, Wright also earned a Certificate in Psychoanalytic Childcare from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis (1954), a Doctorate in Philosophy of Human Development from the University of Chicago (1957), and an Illinois State license to practice clinical psychology (1959, 1964). Wright and Bettelheim co-authored two papers.[13][14]

In the mid-1950s, Wright’s neighbor in Chicago was the statistician Leonard Jimmie Savage. They became close friends. Daily discussions with Savage inspired Wright’s interest in statistics, and in January 1957, Wright began teaching statistics and psychology at the University of Chicago Departments of Education and Psychology. Almost immediately Wright ran into trouble with his departmental colleagues for criticizing the scientific basis of education statistics texts. He would likely have lost his position had not Jimmie Savage intervened on his behalf.[15]

In 1959, the University of Chicago received a gift of a UNIVAC I (1 kilobyte) vacuum tube computer, and, in 1962, the university received a $2.5 million IBM 7090 main frame computer. The latter took up the entire basement of the Institute for Computer Research at 5640 S. Ellis, Chicago. A computer was a tool then unfamiliar to social scientists. Wright, however, especially in his work with Mulliken and Roothaan, had experience writing computer programs to glean information from empirical data. He seized the opportunity to write a program to perform factor analysis and regression on the new computer. Wright may then have written and employed the first computer program for factor analysis in the social sciences.[11][16]

In 1960, Savage invited Georg Rasch to give a series of 24 lectures on his "models for measurement" at the University of Chicago.[17] The Rasch model for constructing measures of ability and difficulty on the same scale subsequently became the focus of Wright's career.

Contributions to measurement (1960–2001)

Wright was dissatisfied with the results of the factor analysis work he'd been doing in the late 1950s on semantic differential data from Chicago area firms' marketing projects.[11] He found the instability of the factors across data sets disconcerting, especially since the lack of a stochastic frame of reference meant there were no standard errors for the factor loadings. Listening to Rasch's lectures in 1960, Wright saw there was another way leading to results that were "stable in terms that a physicist would accept."[11] Extending Rasch's own analogies from James Clerk Maxwell's analysis of mass, force, and acceleration,[18] Wright subsequently used an everyday yardstick in his teaching to convey measurement concepts simply and clearly.

Over the course of the years 1958–2001, Wright chaired 69 dissertations and served on 52 other dissertation committees. The vast majority of these involved new Rasch models, estimation methods, fit statistics, or data applications. Wright's former students include leaders in psychometrics in academic, commercial, and governmental positions globally, such as Wan Rani Abdullah, Raymond Adams, David Andrich, Betty Bergstrom, Nikolaus Bezruczko, Brian Bontempo, William Boone, Ong Kim Lee, Sunhee Chae, Chih-Hung Chang, Bruce H. Choppin, Yi Du, Graham Douglas, George Engelhard, Jr., Patrick B. Fisher, William P. Fisher, Jr., Richard Gershon, Dorothea Juul, George Karabatsos, Ross Lambert, John M. Linacre, Larry Ludlow, Geofferey Masters, Ronald Mead, Robert Mislevy, Mark Moulton, Carol Myford, Nargis Panchapakesan, Wendy Rheault, Matthew Schulz, Richard M. Smith, John Stahl, Douglas Stone, Gregory Stone, Donna Surges Tatum, Herbert Walberg, Mark Wilson, Lih Mei Yang, and many others.

Among Wright's students, Bruce H. Choppin stands out as an early and influential advocate of Rasch measurement.[19][20] Choppin died unexpectedly in Chile in 1983. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement has conferred the IEA Bruce H. Choppin Memorial Award on new researchers doing innovative work in education-related areas since 1985.[21]

Colleagues influenced by Wright include Pedro Alvarez, Trevor Bond, Abraham Bookstein, David Cella, Anne G. Fisher, Christine Fox, Carl Granger, Kathy Green, Richard F. Harvey, Allen Heinemann, Ellen Julian, Elena Kardanova, Rense Lange, Alain Leplege, Mary Lunz, Anatoli Maslak, Robert Massof, Magdalena Mok, Fred Shaw, Kenneth Royal, Everett V. Smith, A. Jackson Stenner, Mark Stone, Alan Tennant, Luigi Tesio, Richard Woodcock, Weimo Zhu, and many others.

List of major events

1964: Visit to Rasch in Denmark. Intensive study with Rasch. Rasch's student, Gus Leunbach, took Wright through his Rasch model computer programs.[11]

1965: CALFIT software written with Bruce H. Choppin and Nargis Panchapakesan, both also former physicists.[17] CALFIT was rewritten about 1974 by Ronald Mead, a student of Wright's, with the assistance of Chris Wright, Wright's son. About the same time the name was changed to BICAL when the binomial model was added. Wright keeps the software in continuous quality improvement mode until 1989, when he assumes a supervisory role and the details of software design and development are taken up by John M. Linacre. Begins annual courses on Rasch measurement in U of Chicago Departments of Education and Psychology. Gives presentation on Rasch models to Midwestern Educational Research Association annual meeting.

1967: At the invitation of Benjamin Bloom,[17] Wright presents Rasch analysis of Law School Admissions Test data at Educational Testing Service.[22]

1969: Releases new unconditional estimation algorithm and model fit statistics.[23] Conducts a five-day workshop on Rasch measurement in Los Angeles at the first American Educational Research Association conference presession ever held; there were over 50 attendees, and Rasch gave the concluding lectures.

1977: Publishes early article introducing Rasch measurement innovations in educational measurement, cited 365 times according to Google Scholar as of 9 April 2012.[24]

1979: Founds MESA Press and publishes the landmark Best Test Design with Mark Stone, cited 1,532 times according to Google Scholar as of 9 April 2012.[25] Develops the concept of the KIDMAP and software for producing it in this period (1978–1982).[26] The KIDMAP concept has subsequently been adopted in other fields as an intuitive way of presenting measurement results.[27]

1980: Facilitates publication of Rasch's 1960 book by the University of Chicago Press.[18]

1981: Organizes and hosts the first International Objective Measurement Workshop.[28] The 15th bi-annual IOMW was held in 2010 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and the 16th IOMW will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in April 2012.

1982: MESA Press publishes Rating Scale Analysis by Wright and Geofferey Masters, cited 1,889 times according to Google Scholar as of 9 April 2012.[29]

1988: Co-founds the Rasch Measurement Special Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association with Richard M. Smith. Publication of Rasch Measurement Transactions begins, with Richard M. Smith as editor; volume 28, number 4, of this quarterly bulletin came out in Spring, 2015.

1996: Adds new features to software integrating principal components factor analysis with Rasch measurement in evaluation of unidimensionality of measures and model fit, on suggestion of John M. Linacre.[30]

1996: Co-founds, with A. Jackson Stenner, the Institute for Objective Measurement and the http://www.Rasch.org web site; the latter continues to serve as a primary resource for information on Rasch measurement meetings, publications, software, consultants, etc.

2003: First conference celebrating Wright's lifetime career contributions, held at Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.[31]

2009: Second conference celebrating Wright's work, also held at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago[32] and documented in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Measurement[33]

Awards

Association of Test Publishers Career Recognition Award in Computer-Based Testing, 2001[34]

Institute for Objective Measurement Lifetime Achievement Award, 2003[31]

Publications

About 200 journal articles – cited 231 times in 2009. 6 books and 19 monographs on measurement, 6 books on psychology 11 computer programs

Select publications

Notes

  1. 1 2 Rasch, G. (1988/1972, Summer). Review of the cooperation of Professor B. D. Wright, University of Chicago, and Professor G. Rasch, University of Copenhagen; letter of June 18, 1972. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 2(2), 19 .
  2. ↑ "Benjamin Wright, renowned psychometrician, 1926-2015". UChicago News. Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  3. ↑ A descendent of Mayflower era Calvinists, Wright’s ancestor, the Reverend Noah Wadhams (1726–1806) was a Congregationalist minister to the pioneer Susquehanna Company settlement of what is now Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania during the era of the Pennamite-Yankee War and the Battle of Wyoming (Wadhams, H. W. S. (1913). Wadhams genealogy: Preceded by a sketch of the Wadham family in England. New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Co., p. 50). Noah was a brother-in-law to the Reverend Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), a leading spokesperson for New Divinity theology during the First Great Awakening and whose writings formed the theological basis of the Second Great Awakening. Hopkins was an early abolitionist and, like his mentor Jonathan Edwards, a staunch advocate for a quality education for everyone, including indigenous Americans, slaves, former slaves, and women.
  4. ↑ Antler, J. (1982). Progressive education and the scientific study of the child: An analysis of the Bureau of Educational Experiments, 1916–1930. Teachers College Record, 83 (4), 559–591.
  5. ↑ Mitchell, L. S. (1921). Here and Now Story Book. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company; Mitchell, L. S. (1934). Young Geographers: How they explore the world & how they map the world. New York: Bank Street College; de Lima, A. (1942). The Little Red School House. New York: The Macmillan Company; O'Han, N. (2009). The little school that could: Tough economic times created the rationale for one school [Electronic Version]. Independent School, 68. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
  6. ↑ Ironically, the AMNCQT was administered by Henry Chauncey. This was the precursor for Educational Testing Service's administration of the SAT. Chauncey would co-found the Educational Testing Service shortly after the war (Lemann, N. [2000]. The big test: The secret history of the American meritocracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux., pp.54–57).
  7. ↑ Kelly, C. C., & Gray, C. (2004). From the birth of scientific computing to today's PCs via the Manhattan Project [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 4/20/2007
  8. ↑ Townes, C. H. (1999). How the laser happened: Adventures of a scientist. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 43–46).
  9. ↑ Townes, C. H., Merritt, F. R., & Wright, B. D. (1948). The pure rotational spectrum of ICL. Physical Review, 73, 1334–1337.
  10. ↑ Roothaan, C. C. J. (1951). New developments in molecular orbital theory. Reviews of Modern Physics, 23(2), 69–89.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Wright, B. D. (1988). George Rasch and measurement. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 2(3), 25–32.
  12. ↑ Lagemann, E. C. (2002). An elusive science: The troubling history of education research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 150ff.
  13. ↑ Bettelheim, B., & Wright, B. D. (1955, October). Staff development in a treatment institution. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, XXV(4), 705–19.
  14. ↑ Wright, B. D., & Bettelheim, B. (1957, March). Professional identity and personal rewards in teaching. The Elementary School Journal, LVII, 297–307.
  15. ↑ Linacre, J. M. (1998). Ben Wright: The measure of the man. Popular Measurement, Spring, 23–25.
  16. ↑ Lewis, R. (1962, October 27). U. of C. 'brain' makes debut, spurts answers with electronic ease. Chicago Tribune
  17. 1 2 3 Andrich, D. (1995). Rasch and Wright: The early years (transcript of a 1981 interview with Ben Wright). In J. M. Linacre (Ed.), Rasch Measurement Transactions, Part 1 (pp. 1–4) . Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press.
  18. 1 2 Rasch, G. (1960). Probabilistic models for some intelligence and attainment tests (reprint, with Foreword and Afterword by B. D. Wright, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Copenhagen, Denmark: Danmarks Paedogogiske Institut.
  19. ↑ Choppin, B. (1968). An item bank using sample-free calibration. Nature, 219, 870–872.
  20. ↑ .Postlethwaite, T. N. (Ed.) (1985). In Memoriam: Bruce Choppin [Special issue]. Evaluation in Education: An International Review Series, 9(1).
  21. ↑ http://www.iea.nl/choppin_award.html
  22. ↑ Wright, B. D. (1968). Sample-free test calibration and person measurement. In Proceedings of the 1967 invitational conference on testing problems (pp. 85–101 ). Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service.
  23. ↑ Wright, B. D., & Panchapakesan, N. (1969). A procedure for sample-free item analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 29(1), 23–48.
  24. ↑ Wright, B. D. (1977). Solving measurement problems with the Rasch model. Journal of Educational Measurement, 14(2), 97–116 .
  25. ↑ Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (1979). Best test design: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press.
  26. ↑ Masters, G. N. (1994). KIDMAP - a history. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 8(2), 366 .
  27. ↑ Chien, T.-W., Wang, W.-C., Wang, H.-Y., & Lin, H.-J. (2009). Online assessment of patients' views on hospital performances using Rasch model's KIDMAP diagram. BMC Health Services Research, 9, 135. 10.1186/1472-6963-9-135 .
  28. ↑ Wright, B. D. (1992). The International Objective Measurement Workshops: Past and future. In M. Wilson (Ed.), Objective measurement: Theory into practice, Vol. 1 (pp. 9–28). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing.
  29. ↑ Wright, B. D., & Masters, G. N. (1982). Rating scale analysis: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press.
  30. ↑ Linacre, J. M. (1998). Structure in Rasch residuals: Why principal components analysis? Rasch Measurement Transactions, 12(2), 636 .
  31. 1 2 Wright, B. D. (2003). Benjamin D. Wright: Lifetime Achievement Award. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 17(1), 908
  32. ↑ http://www.ric.org/research/centers/cror/projects/rrtc/data/T3.aspx
  33. ↑ Bezruczko, N. (2010). Foreword to the special issue on improving efficiency in outcome measurement: Emergence of efficiency in health outcome measurement. Journal of Applied Measurement, 11(3), 197–213.
  34. ↑ Association of Test Publishers. (2001, Fall). Association of Test Publishers., (Accessed 27/06/2010).

External links

Organizations and discussion lists

Software

Instruments and measuring systems

Publications

Meetings and seminars

Academics

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