Current Position and Past Experience
Heather has a diverse, 20-year background in psychological testing ranging from developing instruments for leadership and group performance, effectiveness in professional training and development, personality and attitudes, implicit personality tests to creating assessments for selection testing organizations and certification tests with the Veterans Benefit Association. She has also written book chapters and conducted research in Automatic Item Generation and developed cognitive-based Item Response Theory (IRT) models to aid in validity testing for personality, educational tests, and certification tests.
Heather Hayes is currently a psychometrician for the College of Business at Western Governors University. She has also served as psychometrician for College of IT at Western Governors University.
Education, Honors and Achievements
Hayes holds a PhD in Quantitative Psychology from Georgia Tech, where her dissertation involved the development of an IRT model for evaluating context effects (item ordering) on item responses. She also has an MS in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Virginia Tech, where her thesis focused on the impact of multiple emergent leaders on teamwork mental models and group performance in self-directed teams. She also has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and music from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville).
At UTK, she played alto saxophone in the Pride of the Southland Marching Band as well oboe both locally and in various university music ensembles including orchestra and pit orchestras for operas. She has been heavily involved in research since graduate school, and has published several journal articles, book chapters, and regularly presents at conferences such as ATP and AERA/NCME.
Personal Details and Community Involvement
Heather enjoys traveling, hiking, snowmobiling, and yoga. She particularly enjoys road trips in the western United States and bonding with her son, Paul, over music, history, nature, and geography.
Connect
You can connect with Heather on
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