Frank Schmidt

Frank L. Schmidt is a retired 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 1990s he was the 4th most published researcher in Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) and Personnel Psychology (PP), the two principal publications in the field of industrial-organizational psychology. He is also winner of the first Dunnette Prize, the most prestigious lifetime achievement award given by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology "to honor living individuals whose work has significantly expanded knowledge of the causal significance of individual differences through advanced research, development, and/or application" 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.