What is the path like for an Psychometrician?

[DJFandango]

Im currently a BSN student and recently finished psych clinicals. I think the psychology field is where I belong but not as a nurse. I've been looking at some of the careers in psychology and came across a Psychometrician. I'm really interested in it because I love statistics and I've always been interested in testing (I think testing could really improve how our society is run). It's the first career I've researched that I could really see myself doing. I've always thought psychology was interesting but didn't do it because I didn't think psychologists did anything but therapy and social work.
I'm wondering what the path is for a Psychometrician and how I could transition with a bsn. My GPA isn't great(3.4) but I do have some challenging coursework (0.chem, biochem, calculus 1-2) that may help and i have a 320 on the GRE. I'm willing to put in the work and have no debt right now to hold me back but I'm not sure how to go about it and I've had a hard time finding info about this field.

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[WisNeuro]

A lot of places will want you to have a master's degree for psychometrist work. A couple of places I worked at in grad school required it. However, some places will only require a bachelors degree for the position. For example, some VA's will hire bachelor's level, depends on how the PD is written up in the first place. I'd check out USAjobs.gov and search for "psychology technician" or "psychometrist."

 

[PsychScience]

Just out of curiosity, is your long term goal to simply be administering the tests? Or are you interested in both the administration and the interpretation of the tests? Your answer to that is an important determinant of the path...

 

[DJFandango]

Im much more interested in interpreting tests and participating in the creation of tests (if that's in the scope of the job). I think I would enjoy administering but it's definitely not all I want to do.

 

[WisNeuro]

Oh, yeah, that's not what a psychometrist does at all. Honestly, at an institutional level, a psychometrist solely administers and scores the tests. Then you hand off those scores to someone like me, a neuropsychologist, who then interprets the results.

 

[DJFandango]

Oh ok, I must have misunderstood some of what I was reading. I've been getting the idea that a psychometrist and a Psychometrician are different jobs and that a psychometrist administers tests while a Psychometrician helps design tests and interpret them.

 

[WisNeuro]

Semantics, really. I'm sure places like Pearson and PAR employ research psychometricians to some extent to make the tests, but they don't work clinically. But, psychometrists in the real world settings are primarily testers.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Yep, as the others mentioned, if you're going to want to be involved in the intrepretation of existing measures and design/development of new tests, then a doctorate of some kind is likely going to need to be in your future. Most commonly, it'd likely be a doctorate in clinical/counseling or school, although I/O folks are often involved in measure development and (very heavily) stats; they just tend to work in different settings and generally with different types of measures. Cognitive psych folks also develop tests, although those are generally intended for use in laboratory studies rather than a clinical setting (but cog psych tests most certainly can be "ported" to the clinical realm).

 

[bcliff]

I've been a psychometrist for 3 years with a BS, and psychometrician and psychometrist have been used interchangeably in my job descriptions. I do intake interviews, I administer and score psychological testing, and I work on publications and conference presentations. I'm starting a clinical PhD in the fall (with an emphasis on assessment and neuropsych).

 

[DJFandango]

Thank you all for clearing that up. Psychometrics probably isn't for me if its mostly about administering tests. I've looked at some of the posts on this board and it seems like the testing involved in neuropsych is focused more on determining if there's a problem or assessing things like dementia. Is that correct?
Would I/O psychologists use any sort of aptitude tests or personality tests? I did a little bit of research on I/O because it seemed like it was focused on applying psychology to improve protocols and stuff in companies and that was interesting to me but I got the idea that it's more of an observant, research type job. I was also concerned because I've heard some of my peers express interest in it and I don't know how saturated of a field it is.

 

[Mathysphere]

If you're still interested in being a psychometrician, it's not about administering tests. Psychometricians are the ones who design, develop, score, and interpret the tests. Virtually all psychometrician jobs require a PhD, usually in Quantitative or I/O Psych, educational measurement, statistics, or a related field (some EdDs count as well). Companies such as ETS, College Board, Pearson, ACT, and other organizations employ many psychometricians, and there are quite a few jobs in other areas (i.e., non-K-12 assessment) as well. I don't think there are any PsyD programs which satisfy the requirements of a psychometrician - all the programs I'm aware of are fully-funded PhD/EdD programs during which both the masters and PhD are earned. There's A LOT of research involved, which I suppose goes without saying.

It's completely different from psychometrists, who (as I understand it) have training in administering and applying scoring rubrics for a given test.