Benjamin Drake Wright (March 30, 1926 – October 25, 2015) was an American psychometrician. He is largely responsible for the widespread adoption of

Georg Rasch Georg William Rasch () (21 September 1901 – 19 October 1980) was a Danish mathematician, statistician, and psychometrician, most famous for the development of a class of measurement models known as Rasch models. He studied with R.A. Fisher an ...

's measurement principles and models.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), 1

In the wake of what Rasch referred to as Wright's “almost unbelievable activity in this field” 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.

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.A descendant 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 The Battle of Wyoming, also known as the Wyoming Massacre, was a military engagement during the American Revolutionary War between Patriot militia and a force of Loyalist soldiers and Iroquois warriors. The battle took place in the Wyoming Val ...

(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 The First Great Awakening, sometimes Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival, was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Pro ...

and whose writings formed the theological basis of the

Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...

. 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. 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 Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

, 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 founde
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Antler, J. (1982). Progressive education and the scientific study of the child: An analysis of th

, 1916–1930. Teachers College Record, 83 (4), 559–591. 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.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 lectronic Version Independent School, 68. Retrieved July 1, 2009

From 1940 to 1944, Wright attended The Hill School in

Pottstown, Pennsylvania Pottstown is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts (Pennsylvanian), John Potts. The old name was abando ...

. 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 Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

studying physics.Ironically, the AMNCQT was administered by Henry Chauncey. This was the precursor for

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

's administration of the

SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and Test score, scoring have changed several times. For much of its history, it was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test ...

. Chauncey would co-found the

shortly after the war (Lemann, N.

000 Triple zero, Zero Zero Zero, 0-0-0 or variants may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * 000, the size of several small List of screw drives, screw drives * 0-0-0, a Droid (Star Wars)#0-0-0, dro ...

The big test: The secret history of the American meritocracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux., pp.54–57). The Cornell physics faculty included

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

who, in parallel with

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

, had begun adapting an IBM business punch card machine to solve the Los Alamos physicists’ linear equations more quickly.Kelly, C. C., & Gray, C. (2004). From the birth of scientific computing to today's PCs via the Manhattan Project lectronic Version Retrieved 4/20/200

/ref> 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 Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

Murray Hill, New Jersey Murray Hill is an unincorporated community located within portions of both Berkeley Heights and New Providence, located in Union County, in the northern portion of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is the longtime central location of Bell ...

, under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Charles H. Townes. Townes had begun a series of pioneering studies in microwave spectroscopy,Townes, C. H. (1999). How the laser happened: Adventures of a scientist. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 43–46). 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.Townes, C. H., Merritt, F. R., & Wright, B. D. (1948). The pure rotational spectrum of ICL. Physical Review, 73, 1334–1337. In the fall of 1947, Wright enrolled as a graduate student in the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

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.Roothaan, C. C. J. (1951). New developments in molecular orbital theory. Reviews of Modern Physics, 23(2), 69–89. Wright continued work as a research assistant with Mulliken and his colleagues until 1951.Wright, B. D. (1988). George Rasch and measurement. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 2(3), 25–3

/ref> 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 Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the f ...

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 Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and rela ...

. 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,Lagemann, E. C. (2002). An elusive science: The troubling history of education research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 150ff. 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

(1957), and an Illinois State license to practice clinical psychology (1959, 1964). Wright and Bettelheim co-authored two papers.Bettelheim, B., & Wright, B. D. (1955, October). Staff development in a treatment institution. '' American Journal of Orthopsychiatry'', XXV(4), 705–19.Wright, B. D., & Bettelheim, B. (1957, March). Professional identity and personal rewards in teaching. The Elementary School Journal, LVII, 297–307. In the mid-1950s, Wright's neighbor in Chicago was the statistician

Leonard Jimmie Savage Leonard Jimmie Savage (born Leonard Ogashevitz; 1917 – 1971) was an American mathematician and statistician. Economist Milton Friedman said Savage was "one of the few people I have met whom I would unhesitatingly call a genius." Education and ...

. 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 Savage intervened on his behalf.Linacre, J. M. (1998). Ben Wright: The measure of the man. Popular Measurement, Spring, 23–2

/ref> In 1959, the University of Chicago received a gift of a

UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the invento ...

(1 kilobyte) vacuum tube computer, and, in 1962, the university received a $2.5 million

IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation Transistor computer, transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member o ...

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.Lewis, R. (1962, October 27). U. of C. 'brain' makes debut, spurts answers with electronic ease. Chicago Tribune In 1960, Savage invited

to give a series of 24 lectures on his "models for measurement" at the University of Chicago.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. The

Rasch model The Rasch model, named after Georg Rasch, is a psychometric model for analyzing categorical data, such as answers to questions on a reading assessment or questionnaire responses, as a function of the trade-off between the respondent's abilities, ...

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 Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observe ...

work he'd been doing in the late 1950s on semantic differential data from Chicago area firms' marketing projects. 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." Extending Rasch's own analogies from

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism an ...

's analysis of mass, force, and acceleration,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. 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 David Andrich is an Australian academic and assessment specialist. He has made substantial contributions to quantitative social science including seminal work on the Polytomous Rasch model for measurement, which is used in the social sciences ...

, Betty Bergstrom, Nikolaus Bezruczko
Brian BontempoOng Kim Lee
Sunhee Chae, Chih-Hung Chang
Bruce H. Choppin
Yi Du, Graham Douglas
George Engelhard, Jr.Patrick B. Fisher
Dorothea Juul
George Karabatsos
Ross Lambert
John M. LinacreGeofferey 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
Lih Mei Yang, and many others. Among Wright's students, Bruce H. Choppin stands out as an early and influential advocate of Rasch measurement.Choppin, B. (1968). An item bank using sample-free calibration. Nature, 219, 870–872..Postlethwaite, T. N. (Ed.) (1985). In Memoriam: Bruce Choppin pecial issue Evaluation in Education: An International Review Series, 9(1). 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. Colleagues influenced by Wright include Pedro Alvarez
Trevor Bond
Abraham Bookstein
David CellaAnne G. Fisher
Carl Granger, Kathy Green, Richard F. Harvey
Allen Heinemann
Ellen Julian, Elena Kardanova, Rense Lange, Alain Leplege, Mary Lunz, Anatoli Maslak
Robert MassofMagdalena Mok
Fred Shaw
Everett V. SmithA. Jackson Stenner
Mark Stone
Alan Tennant
Luigi Tesio,

Richard Woodcock Richard Wesley Woodcock (January 29, 1928 – January 2, 2024) was an American psychometrician. He is known for his work on the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory of human intelligence and for his work in the development of several cognitive tests, ...

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. 1965: CALFIT software written with Bruce H. Choppin and Nargis Panchapakesan, both also former physicists. 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 kept the software in continuous quality improvement mode until 1989, when he assumed a supervisory role and the details of software design and development were taken up by John M. Linacre. Began annual courses on Rasch measurement in U of Chicago Departments of Education and Psychology. Gave presentation on Rasch models to Midwestern Educational Research Association annual meeting. 1967: At the invitation of

Benjamin Bloom Benjamin Samuel Bloom (February 21, 1913 – September 13, 1999) was an American educational psychology, educational psychologist and Didactic method, didactician who made contributions to the classification of educational objectives and to ...

, Wright presented Rasch analysis of Law School Admissions Test data at

.Wright, B. D. (1968). Sample-free test calibration and person measurement. In Proceedings of the 1967 invitational conference on testing problems (pp. 85–10

. Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service. 1969: Released new unconditional estimation algorithm and model fit statistics.Wright, B. D., & Panchapakesan, N. (1969). A procedure for sample-free item analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 29(1), 23–48. Conducted 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: Published early article introducing Rasch measurement innovations in educational measurement, cited 747 times according to Google Scholar as of 18 November 2019.Wright, B. D. (1977). Solving measurement problems with the Rasch model. Journal of Educational Measurement, 14(2), 97–11

1979: Founds MESA Press and published the landmark ''Best Test Design'' with Mark Stone, cited 3,130 times according to Google Scholar as of 18 November 2019.Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (1979). Best test design: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press. Developed the concept of the KIDMAP and software for producing it in this period (1978–1982).Masters, G. N. (1994). KIDMAP - a history. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 8(2), 36

The KIDMAP concept has subsequently been adopted in other fields as an intuitive way of presenting measurement results.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. 10.1186/1472-6963-9-13

1980: Facilitated publication of Rasch's 1960 book by the University of Chicago Press. 1981: Organized and hosted the first International Objective Measurement Workshop.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. IOMW continues to be a forum for new developments in measurement theory and practice, with plans for th
20th meeting
to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2020. 1982: MESA Press published ''Rating Scale Analysis'' by Wright and Geofferey Masters, cited 4,049 times according to Google Scholar as of 18 November 2019.Wright, B. D., & Masters, G. N. (1982). Rating scale analysis: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press. 1988: Co-founded the Rasch Measurement Special Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association with Richard M. Smith. Publication o
Rasch Measurement Transactions
begins, with Richard M. Smith as editor; volume 32, number 4, of this quarterly bulletin came out in late 2019. 1996: Added 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.Linacre, J. M. (1998). Structure in Rasch residuals: Why principal components analysis? Rasch Measurement Transactions, 12(2), 63

1996: Co-founded, with A. Jackson Stenner, the Institute for Objective Measurement and the http://www.Rasch.org web site; the latter continued 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. A selection of papers from this conference focusing on personal accounts from Wright's students and colleagues was published in 2017. 2009: Second conference celebrating Wright's work, also held at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and documented in a special issue of the Journal of Applied MeasurementBezruczko, 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.

Awards

Association of Test Publishers Career Recognition Award in Computer-Based Testing, 2001Association of Test Publishers. (2001, Fall). Association of Test Publisher

, (Accessed 27/06/2010). Institute for Objective Measurement Lifetime Achievement Award, 2003Wright, B. D. (2003). Benjamin D. Wright: Lifetime Achievement Award. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 17(1), 90

/ref>

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

* Adams, R. J., & Wright, B. D. (1994). When does misfit make a difference? In M. Wilson (Ed.), Objective measurement: Theory into practice, Volume 2 (pp. 244–270). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. * Bettelheim, B., & Wright, B. D. (1955, October). Staff development in a treatment institution. '' American Journal of Orthopsychiatry'', XXV(4), 705–19. * Bouchard, E., & Wright, B. D. (1997). Kinesthetic ventures: Informed by the work of F. M. Alexander, Stanislavski, Peirce, & Freud (M. Protzel, Ed.). Chicago: MESA Press. * Fisher, W. P., Jr., & Wright, B. D. (Eds.). (1994). Applications of probabilistic conjoint measurement. International Journal of Educational Research, 21(6), 557–664. * Granger, C. V., & Wright, B. D. (1993). Looking ahead to the use of functional assessment in ambulatory physiatric and primary care (C. V. Granger, & G. E. Gresham eds.) pecial issue Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America: New Developments in Functional Assessment, 4(3), 595–605. * Grosse, M. E., & Wright, B. D. (1985). Validity and reliability of true-false tests. Educational & Psychological Measurement, 45(1), 1–13. * Grosse, M. E., & Wright, B. D. (1986, Sep). Setting, evaluating, and maintaining certification standards with the Rasch model. Evaluation & the Health Professions, 9(3), 267–285. * Grosse, M. E., & Wright, B. D. (1988). Psychometric characteristics of scores on a patient management problem test. Educational & Psychological Measurement, 48(2), 297–305. * Levinsohn, F. H., & Wright, B. D. (Eds.) (1976). School desegregation: Shadow and substance (pp. 1–5). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * Linacre, J. M., & Wright, B. D. (2002). Understanding Rasch measurement: Construction of measures from many-facet data. Journal of Applied Measurement, 3(4), 486–512. * Masters, G. N., & Wright, B. D. (1984, Dec). The essential process in a family of measurement models. Psychometrika, 49(4), 529–544. * Masters, G. N., & Wright, B. D. (1997). The partial credit model. In W. J. van der Linden & R. K. Hambleton (Eds.), Handbook of modern item response theory (pp. 101–21). New York: Springer-Verlag. * Perline, R., Wright, B. D., & Wainer, H. (1979, Spring). The Rasch model as additive conjoint measurement. Applied Psychological Measurement, 3(2), 237–255. * Townes, C. H., Merritt, F. R., & Wright, B. D. (1948). The pure rotational spectrum of ICL. Physical Review, 73, 1334–37. * Wright, B. D. (1958, April). On behalf of a personal approach to learning. The Elementary School Journal, 58(7), 365–75. * Wright, B. D. (1968). Introduction. In A. R. Nielsen (Ed.), Lust for learning (pp. 11–15). Thy, Denmark: New Experimental College Press. * Wright, B. D. (1968). The Sabbath Lecture: Love and order. In A. R. Nielsen & and others (Eds.), Lust for learning (pp. 65–8). Thy, Denmark: New Experimental College Press. * Wright, B. D. (1968). Sample-free test calibration and person measurement. In Proceedings of the 1967 invitational conference on testing problems (pp. 85–10

. Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service. * Wright, B. D. (1977). Misunderstanding the Rasch model. Journal of Educational Measurement, 14(3), 219–225. * Wright, B. D. (1977). Solving measurement problems with the Rasch model. Journal of Educational Measurement, 14(2), 97–11

* Wright, B. D. (1984). Despair and hope for educational measurement. Contemporary Education Review, 3(1), 281–28

* Wright, B. D. (1985). Additivity in psychological measurement. In E. Roskam (Ed.), Measurement and personality assessment (pp. 101–112). North Holland: Elsevier Science Ltd. * Wright, B. D. (1988, Sep). The efficacy of unconditional maximum likelihood bias correction: Comment on Jansen, Van den Wollenberg, and Wierda. Applied Psychological Measurement, 12(3), 315–318. * 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. * Wright, B. D. (1996). Comparing Rasch measurement and factor analysis. Structural Equation Modeling, 3(1), 3–24. * Wright, B. D. (1996). Composition analysis: Teams, packs, chains. In G. Engelhard & M. Wilson (Eds.), Objective measurement: Theory into practice, Vol. 3 (pp. 241–26

. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. * Wright, B. D. (1997, June). Fundamental measurement for outcome evaluation. Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation State of the Art Reviews, 11(2), 261–88. * Wright, B. D. (1997, Winter). A history of social science measurement. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 16(4), 33–45, 5

* Wright, B. D. (1999). Fundamental measurement for psychology. In S. E. Embretson & S. L. Hershberger (Eds.), The new rules of measurement: What every educator and psychologist should know (pp. 65–10

. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. * Wright, B. D. (1999). Rasch measurement models. In G. N. Masters & J. P. Keeves (Eds.), Advances in measurement in educational research and assessment (pp. 85–97). New York: Pergamon. * Wright, B. D., & Bell, S. R. (1984, Winter). Item banks: What, why, how. Journal of Educational Measurement, 21(4), 331–34

* Wright, B. D., & Bettelheim, B. (1957, March). Professional identity and personal rewards in teaching. The Elementary School Journal, LVII, 297–307. * Wright, B. D., & Douglas, G. A. (1975). Best test design and self-tailored testing. Research Memorandum No. 19. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Laboratory, Department of Education, University of Chicag

* Wright, B. D., & Douglas, G. A. (1977). Best procedures for sample-free item analysis. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 281–294. * Wright, B. D., & Douglas, G. A. (1977). Conditional versus unconditional procedures for sample-free item analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37, 47–60. * Wright, B. D., & Linacre, J. M. (1989). Observations are always ordinal; measurements, however, must be interval. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 70(12), 857–86

* Wright, B. D., Linacre, J. M., & Heinemann, A. W. (1993). Measuring functional status in rehabilitation. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America, 4(3), 475–491C. V. Granger & G. E. Gresham (Eds.), New developments in functional assessment. * Wright, B. D., & Masters, G. N. (1982). Rating scale analysis: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press

* Wright, B. D., Mead, R. J., & Bell, S. R. (1980). BICAL: Calibrating items and scales with the Rasch model. Research Memorandum 23C. Statistical Laboratory, Department of Education, The University of Chicago

* Wright, B. D., Mead, R. J., & Ludlow, L. H. (1980). KIDMAP: person-by-item interaction mapping. MESA Memorandum #29. Statistical Laboratory, Department of Education, The University of Chicago

* Wright, B. D., & Mok, M. (2000). Understanding Rasch measurement: Rasch models overview. Journal of Applied Measurement, 1(1), 83–106. * Wright, B. D., & Panchapakesan, N. (1969). A procedure for sample-free item analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 29(1), 23–48. * Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (1979). Best test design: Rasch measurement. Chicago, Illinois: MESA Press

* Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (1998). Diseño de mejores pruebas panish translation of Best Test Design(R. Vidal, Trans.). Mexico City, Mexico: CENEVAL (Original work published 1979). * Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (1999). Measurement essentials. Wilmington, DE: Wide Range, Inc

* Wright, B. D., & Stone, M. H. (2004). Making measures. Chicago: Phaneron Press. * Wright, B. D., & Yonke, A. M. (1989). American University Studies, Series V: Philosophy. Vol. 82: Hero, villain, saint: An adventure in the experience of individuality. New York: Peter Lang.

Notes

External links

Organizations and discussion lists

* http://www.rasch.org * http://www.raschsig.org * https://web.archive.org/web/20110706085804/http://www2.wu-wien.ac.at/marketing/mbc/mbc.html * https://mailinglist.acer.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/rasch

Software

* https://web.archive.org/web/20100912092023/http://www.assess.com/xcart/product.php?productid=220 * http://www.rummlab.com/ * http://www.winsteps.com/ * http://bearcenter.berkeley.edu/GradeMap/

Instruments and measuring systems

* http://www.ampsintl.com/ * http://www.lexile.com * http://www.devtestservice.org * http://www.sportsmeasures.com/index.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Benjamin Drake American physicists 20th-century American psychologists American statisticians 2015 deaths 1926 births The Hill School alumni Mathematicians from Pennsylvania People from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Little Red School House alumni Quantitative psychologists