Colin Cooper

Many moons ago I started reading Chemistry at the University of Exeter - then discovered Psychology and changed courses. The late Paul Kline was a major influence on my work and thinking; unlike many he appreciated how empty psychology becomes as a discipline if researchers and practitioners cannot accurately measure the theoretical concepts which they develop with such enthusiasm.

I lectured and researched in the psychology of human intelligence, psychometrics and personality at Queen's University, Belfast until taking early retirement and emigrating to Canada in 2012. I started writing because there were not any textbooks covering the sorts of areas that I wanted to teach, and discovered that writing was also excellent for clarifying my own ideas.

My latest book is "An Introduction to Psychometrics and Psychological Assessment" (published by Routledge). This is a heavily revised, expanded and updated version of my earlier "Psychological Testing" book which won the British Psychological Society's textbook prize. Hopefully the new book is even better! It aims to give students and practitioners a grasp of how questionnaires and tests are designed, constructed, used and interpreted - covering areas such as reliability theory, generalisability theory, factor analysis, network analysis, item response theory, Rasch scaling and so on - as well as the principles of test construction and item-writing. It attempts to do so with minimal exposure to statistical formulae: key concepts are explained using freely-downloadable spreadsheets.

The 4th edition of "Individual Differences and Personality" came out in 2020 - a very major re-write; it's now a much larger book and includes cutting-edge research into personality and intelligence, as well as the basic psychometrics needed to grasp the concepts and use tests in practice.

A few years ago I put together the IQ tests for the BBC and RTE "Test the Nation" IQ tests which was great fun; I also went to Japan a couple of times to appear on their programmes. So if my face seems vaguely familiar, that could be why.

I now live in London, Ontario within my partner Wesley and Lucky and PussPuss (the cats) where I've learned the delights of snow-blowing, visiting wineries, barbecuing, walking the trails and lolling in the hot summer sunshine. When not doing this I listen to classical music (mainly Baroque), and am an editor-in-chief of the journals "Personality & Individual Differences" and "Acta Psychologica". I was president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences from 2021-2023, and am still on its Board of Directors as past-president.