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Niels Waller

Niels Waller

Department Affiliations

Narrative

Niels G. Waller, Ph.D., is Full Professor and Director of Quantitative/Psychometric Methods and Professor of Individual Differences, Personality and Behavioral Genetics in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He received the 1999 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Individual Differences, a 1997 Raymond B. Cattell Award for Multivariate Experimental Research, Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, a 1997 Morton Prince Award, International Society for the Study of Dissociation, and a 1989 Thomas Small Prize: Harvard University. Dr. Waller obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and completed his clinical internship at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. He is currently an Editor of Applied Psychological Measurement and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals. His primary research interests include the development and evaluation of Quantitative Models of Individual Differences; Scale Development and Models of Person-Item Interactions in Personality/Psychopathology Assessment (Item Response Theory, Adaptive Testing); Taxometrics, Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling; Psychometric Theory; and Genetic and Environmental Models of the Development and Expression of Psychopathology, Personality, Social Attitudes and Beliefs.


Specialties

  • psychometric theory
  • quantitative models of individual differences
  • multivariate analysis
  • factor analysis and structural equation modeling

Educational Background

  • Ph.D.: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1990.

Publications

  • Waller, N. G. & Jones, J. A. (2010). Correlation weights. Psychometrika, 75, 58-69.
  • Waller, N. G., & Reise, S. P. (2010). Measuring psychopathology with non-standard IRT models: Fitting the four-parameter model to the MMPI. In S. E. Embretson (Ed.). Measuring psychological constructs with model-based approaches, 147-173.
  • Waller, N. G. & Jones, J. A. (2009). Locating the extrema of fungible regression weights. Psychometrika, 74, 589-602.
  • Reise, S. P. & Waller, N. G. (2009). Item Response Theory and Clinical Measurement. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 5, 27-48.
  • Waller, N. G. (2008). Fungible weights in multiple regression. Psychometrika, 73, 691-703.
  • Waller, N. G., Yonce, L. J., Grove, W. M., Faust, D., & Lenzenweger, M. (Eds.) (2006). A Paul Meehl reader: Essays on the practice of scientific psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
  • Waller, Niels Gordon (2006). Carving nature at its joints: Paul Meehl’s contributions to taxometrics. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115, 210-215.
  • Waller, N. G., & Lilienfeld. S. (2005). Paul Meehl: The cumulative record. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 1209-1229.
  • Kang, S. M., & Waller, N. G. (2005). Moderated Multiple Regression, Spurious Interaction Effects, and IRT. Applied Psychological Measurement, 29, 87-105.
  • Tomarken, A., & Waller, N. G. (2005). Structural Equation Modeling as a Data-Analytic Framework for Clinical Science: Strengths, Limitations, and Misconceptions. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 31-65.
  • Waller, Niels Gordon (2004). The fallacy of the null hypothesis in soft psychology. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 11, 83-86.
  • Waller, N. G., & Meehl, P. E. (2002). Risky tests, verisimilitude and path analysis. Psychological Methods, 7, 323-337.
  • Meehl, P. E., & Waller, N. G. (2002). The path analysis controversy: A new statistical approach to strong appraisal of verisimilitude. Psychological Methods, 7, 283-300.
  • Waller, N. G., Underhill, J. M., & Kaiser, H. A. (1999). A method for generating simulated plasmodes and artificial test clusters with user-defined shape, size, and orientation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 34, 123-142.
  • Waller, Niels Gordon (1999). Searching for structure in the MMPI. In S. Embretson & S. Hershberger (Eds.), The New Rules of Measurement: What every psychologist and educator should know, 185-217
  • Waller, N. G., Kaiser, H. A., Illian, J. B., & Manry, M. (1998). A comparison of the classification capabilities of the 1-dimensional Kohonen Neural Network with two partitioning and three hierarchical cluster analysis algorithms. Psychometrika, 63, 5-22.
  • Waller, N. G., & Meehl, P. E. (1998). Multivariate taxometric procedures: Distinguishing types from continua. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
  • Waller, N. G., & Shaver, P. (1997). The cultural transmission of romantic love styles: A Twin-family study. Psychological Science, 5, 268-274.
  • Waller, N. G., Kojetin, B. A., Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D. T., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Genetic and environmental influences on religious interests, attitudes and values: A study of twins reared apart and together. Psychological Science,, 1, 138-142.
  • Waller, N. G., & Reise, S. P. (1989). Computerized adaptive personality assessment: An illustration with the Absorption scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol(57), 6, 1051-1058.

Professional Activities

  • Associate Editor, Applied Psychological Measurement

Awards

  • Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Individual Differences, 2005
  • Raymond B. Cattell Award for Multivariate Experimental Research, Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, 1997
  • Morton Prince Award, International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 1997
  • Thomas Small Prize, Harvard University, 1989
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