| Frank L. Schmidt | |
| Birth Date: | 29 April 1944 |
| Birth Place: | Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Field: | Psychology |
| Work Institutions: | University of Iowa |
| Alma Mater: | Bellarmine College (BA) Purdue University (MS, PhD) |
| Known For: | intelligence, personality, Industrial and organizational psychology, Meta-analysis |
Frank L. Schmidt (April 29, 1944 – August 21, 2021)[1] was an American psychology professor at the University of Iowa known for his work in personnel selection and employment testing. Schmidt was a researcher in the area of industrial and organizational psychology with the most number of publications in the two major journals in the 1980s.[2] 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.[2] He was 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".[3]
He was 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 testified as an expert witness specializing in employment selection.
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 PhD in 1970. From 1970 to 1973 he was assistant professor of Industrial Psychology, Michigan State University, 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 was the Gary C. Fethke Chair in Leadership emeritus, Department of Management and Organizations in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1985.
He authored a 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.[4] [5]
He has served on the editorial boards of
Students have included Ken Pearlman, Mike A. McDaniel (Virginia Commonwealth University), Ken Law (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Deniz Ones (University of Minnesota), Vish Viswesvaran (Florida International University), Kevin Carlson (Virginia Tech), Huy Le (University of Nevada-Las Vegas), In-Sue Oh (Temple University), Jonathan Shaffer (West Texas A&M University) and Ben Postlethwaite (Pepperdine University).
He (co) authored about 200 research papers in journals and presented at the academic conferences about 300 times. His work has been cited more than 66,000 times as of 2020. He was still active in teaching and research.