Greg Hurtz, Ph.D.

Work History

I've been in the world of work since my first paper route around age 12 or 13, followed by part-time jobs throughout high school and college including gas station attendant, cashier, janitor/building maintenance, food preparation worker, baker, salad bar attendant, table server, dishwasher, pizza cook, pizza deliverer, and probably several jobs I've forgotten. I've been working in the field of I-O psychology and psychometrics since my first internship in a State testing unit at age 22. I subsequently held other positions throughout graduate school such as job analyst, test developer, psychometric intern, and measurement statistician. My early work experiences in "blue collar" and service positions, combined with my later experience and study of analyzing work, defining job performance, and identifying personal qualities related to strong performance, gives me a strong appreciation for shows like Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Gotta Do It. Those are great shows to watch if one is interested in studying the world of work, while avoiding giving disproportionate attention to the more "white collar" occupations.

Research Interests

My research interests are varied but I tend to gravitate most strongly toward topics in psychometrics, or the measurement of psychological traits. A bit more specifically, I tend to focus on psychometrics as it applies in the world of work, especially in the construction of measures testing peoples' knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics related to their potential for strong work performance. My research has addressed topics in both personality and cognitive ability testing, as well as tests of occupational knowledge used in licensure/certification contexts. I have explored a number of topics in test construction and validation, setting cutoff scores, and test-taker cheating and response distortion, as well as topics in confirmatory factor models, item response theory, Rasch measurement, and Monte Carlo simulation. All of my research has a strong quantitative component to it. For more information visit my Research page.

Teaching and Mentorship

I teach classes in industrial psychology, statistics, and psychological testing/measurement at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I typically have a small number of research assistants helping with my ongoing research (see my Research page for current lab members), and I try to involve them whenever I can in applied work opportunities. I have chaired well over 25 master's theses and have kept in touch with many of my former students working in the field. The solid work they do is a source of pride for me, for the possibly small part I played in contributing to their job knowledge and skills.

Applied Work

Throughout my time as a Professor at CSUS, I have continued to remain involved in applied, practical work outside the University, through contracts with State agencies, freelance projects, and part-time contracts with consulting firms. In recent years I have aligned closely with PSI Services LLC, partly to assist with psychometric work for their clients, but mostly to conduct research and development activities to help enhance their psychometric methods and associated services, and disseminate our research at conferences and in scientific journals. This work benefits my teaching, mentorship, and research at CSUS because it relates directly to what I teach in the classroom and is directly in the career realm of most of my graduate students (several of whom work for PSI and other firms/agencies I have consulted for).

Contact/Follow

E-mail: ghurtz@csus.edu

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfHurtz (@ProfHurtz)

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/greghurtz

Google Scholar Citations: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uKvZ2ygAAAAJ&hl=en