Professor Emeritus Shuzihiko Nishisato awarded Lifetime Achievement Award from Psychometric Society
One of the first faculty members hired at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has been recognized for his long career and contributions to psychometrics.
Professor Emeritus Shizuhiko Nishisato has from the Psychometric Society. The society is in psychology, education and the social sciences.
Colloquially known as Professor Nishi at ݮƵ, Shizuhiko joined ݮƵ in 1967, where he served as chair of the Department of Measurement and Evaluation from 1971 to 1976. Retiring in 2000, he is a widely praised data scientist who inspired many colleagues in 32 years at the Institute. He has published 19 books and over 200 papers.
He is grateful and honoured to be recognized – but, speaking with ݮƵ, was surprised to have been named. “This has been a wonderful experience though it looked as though I had been forgotten,” he said, recognizing much time has passed since his retirement. “So, the current members of the Society do not know me at all, and friends of mine received the same award 15 to 20 years ago.”
For this honour, Professor Nishi will receive a commemorative plaque, a small monetary prize, and free lifetime membership in the Society. He is also invited to present a keynote lecture at the next International Meeting of the Psychometric Society, which is scheduled for this summer.
Nishi says this honour is a rich opportunity to share his wisdom and discuss his contributions to the field.
“Throughout my career, I owe [ݮƵ Professor Emeritus] Ross Traub so much and I cannot thank him enough. Ross Traub, Roderick McDonald, Raghu Bhargava and I created ‘a center of measurement in the world’,” says Professor Nishi, borrowing words from R. Darrell Bock, his doctoral supervisor at the University of North Carolina.
A focus on psychometrics
Professor Nishi’s field focuses on psychometrics, the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed – including intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement.
“Psychometrics is devoted to the quantitative analysis of psychological phenomena,” he says. “It’s very much like econometrics for economics and biometrics for biology.”
Professor Ruth Childs, based in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, has had similar paths to Professor Nishi – they both studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Thurstone Psychometric Lab, “although we earned our PhDs 27 years apart,” she says, noting he graduated in 1965, and she in 1992.
“Psychometrics requires a lot of computation and, when I was writing my dissertation, we were transitioning from mainframe computers to personal computers,” she added. “Nishi and I have talked about the tenacity required for students in his era, who might spend six months doing calculations and then six months checking them. That meticulousness is apparent throughout Nishi’s lifetime of work.”
Professor Nishi jokes that, when Professor Childs was being recruited to ݮƵ, some raised the concern of “inbreeding” and favourable treatment because of their similar backgrounds. “But then it happened that when I got my PhD, she wasn’t even born yet,” he remembers. “We decided that there shouldn't be any sort of overlap in the training. She’s a very good researcher.”
The praise here goes both ways. In her first semester as ݮƵ faculty, he invited her to observe his course on scaling methods – including Dual Scaling, which is a sophisticated approach to revealing patterns in data.
Professor Childs says, “I still have my notes from the course and have used his Dual Scaling method and software in several research projects since then—in fact, one of my students used Dual Scaling in his thesis earlier this year.”
“Beyond the content,” she adds, “I really appreciated Nishi’s approach to teaching, in which he treated all students as junior colleagues.
Professor Nishi made enormous contributions to educational and psychological measurement during his 32 years at ݮƵ, says Childs, and has continued to contribute since his retirement – noting she recently purchased a copy of his book on data analysis that he published last fall.
“If not for the mandatory retirement rules that happened to be in effect when he turned 65, I am certain that ݮƵ’s students would have benefited from his teaching and mentoring for many more years. It’s wonderful to see the Psychometric Society honour him for his work so far.”