How To Become a Psychometrician

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What Is a Psychometrician?

Definition, Job Duties, and Work Environments

A psychometrician is a professional who designs tests used to measure psychological characteristics. This includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities of test subjects, or KSAs as they’re collectively referred. In pursuit of this goal, psychometricians take a lot of factors into consideration in developing and delivering tests.

They have to be sure questions aren’t riddled with biases that might unfairly skew results. They decide how to format questions to come up with the most accurate KSA assessments for a given group — whether essays, short answers, multiple choice, true or false, or other structuring. They determine how long a test should take, and also whether it would be best delivered online or in-person, and whether it should be written or verbal.

In addition to actually creating tests and interactive tools, psychometricians also:

Run tests and experiments to design assessment tools and scales.
Evaluate the reliability of existing tests.
Periodically review tests and assessment tools and revise them as needed.
Help organizations modify existing tests to meet their own needs.
Oversee testing administration systems.
Analyze test results to check for anomalies, cheating, and other causes of concern.
Establish scoring systems.
Conduct research into new testing methods.

Sometimes, a psychometrician’s duties overlap with those of a psychometrist, a psychology professional who specializes in scoring and interpreting psychological tests. While psychometricians might interpret test results while creating, reviewing, or revising tests, they’re typically much more focused on test creation than screening individual clients.

Where Do Psychometricians Work?

Psychometricians often design psychological assessment tools used to help psychology professionals of all kinds understand and formally evaluate their patients. However, they can also use their talents to design standardized tests, licensing exams, aptitude tests, and basically any other kind of exam. Because of this, they can work for any number of organizations that utilize such tools.

Psychometricians often work for:

Standardized testing services.
Hiring agencies.
Licensing and certification agencies (nursing boards, accountancy boards, etc.)
Research organizations of all kinds in the public, private, and government sectors.
Schools and school districts.
Mental healthcare
Organizations that serve people with developmental disorders, learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, and cognitive impairments.

To create useful exams and evaluations for any of these organizations, psychometricians often work alongside subject-matter experts. For example, to create a licensing exam for new teachers in a given state, a psychometrician might create test content with a panel of experienced educators. The educators would outline what skills the exam should test while the psychometrician would figure out the best way to measure each of those skills.

How To Become a Psychometrician – an Overview of Skills, Training, and Education

The tests and measures psychometricians create are high-stakes. They can determine if a person gets a job, influence mental health diagnoses, and are crucial to understanding what kind of support a person might need.

There are a number of educational paths you can take to become a psychometrician. But all of them take you through a master’s or doctorate degree.

Skills to Learn On Your Journey to Becoming a Psychometrician
While psychometricians are, at their core, psychology professionals, their skill set is perhaps more STEM-oriented than any other type of psychology specialist. On your own academic journey, you’ll learn about human behavior, abnormal psychology, and other staples of the field, but you’ll also need to learn about statistics and experimental design.
As you explore psychometry classes at the master’s and doctorate level, you’ll likely take classes on:
Item response theory: a test-making theory that emphasizes the relationship between concrete observable outcomes like test answers and psychological traits.
Regression analysis: a method of determining the relationship between dependent and independent variables.
Missing data analysis: a field devoted to solving issues with incomplete data, a common issue in psychological testing.
Bayesian statistics: a collection of methods used to update probabilities and hypotheses based on new information.
Along the way, you’ll also learn how to use AI-assisted tools and programming languages to complete statistical analyses, manage data, and model your research visually. No matter what kinds of assessments you create, these skills and tools are essential to making your work consistent, reliable, and scientifically sound.

Step 1: Earn a Bachelor’s Degree

You won’t find many or any bachelor’s programs in psychometrics, but you can start your journey in any number of academic disciplines. Many begin by earning degrees in psychology and learning about cognition, mental health, and behavior. This is especially helpful if you want to research and create psychological assessment tools.

But because this field requires a firm grasp of statistical analysis and modeling, earning a bachelor’s in statistics can be just as helpful. Or if you’re interested in creating tests for students, children, or people struggling with developmental or cognitive delays, a degree in education can be handy, too. If you have the means and time, mixing these disciplines as majors and minors can be a great way to cover all your bases.

Step 2: Gain Experience in Entry-level Psychometrician Jobs

When you start looking for psychometrician jobs, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find a few that require just a bachelor’s degree and little-to-no experience. Keep in mind, though, that these are typically entry-level psychometrician jobs — your duties will likely reflect that fact.

Instead of designing tests, you’ll likely be scoring tests, writing reports, coordinating tests with clients, and helping your more experienced colleagues with their own research projects. Also keep an eye out for jobs with names like:

Junior psychometrician.
Associate psychometrician.
Research analyst or assistant.
Quantitative analyst.

You can gain invaluable insights by working in related fields, too. This might include being a teacher, counselor, social service worker, or another type of professional that uses some of the tests that psychometricians create.

Step 3: Pursue a Master’s Degree

In most cases, any psychometrician position that requires you to create, review, or revise assessment tools will require a master’s degree at minimum. But while there are a few master’s in psychometrics programs out there, they’re not super common.

Fortunately, though, you can prepare for a career as a psychometrician by earning a Master’s in:

Quantitative Psychology.
Educational Measurement, Assessment, and/or Evaluation.
Educational Psychology.
Applied Statistics.
Industrial-Organizational Psychology.

You can even prepare by earning a master’s in psychology or clinical psychology. If you take this route, though, keep an eye out for programs that offer classes on psychometrics or research design or even graduate certificates in those topics.

Step 4: Pursue a Doctorate

While many psychometrician jobs require a master’s at minimum, you’ll also see quite a few that require a doctorate or at least prefer candidates with doctorates. This is especially true for senior psychometrician roles and roles at universities, large standardized testing agencies, research organizations, and other places where you’re likely to be creating assessment tools with wide, complex applications.

But no matter where your career goals lie, a doctorate can help you stand out in what is already an extremely specialized field — and just like at the other levels, you have a few degree options to consider at the doctorate level.

Your first option is, of course, a PhD in psychometrics or a PhD in psychology with a concentration or specialization in psychometrics. A PhD in Quantitative Psychology can also be helpful because it focuses on statistical analysis, data modeling, and other STEM methods psychometricians use.

If you’re zeroing in on a specific industry, a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology or Educational Psychology can prepare you for high-level research positions reserved for true authorities in the profession. Clinical professionals who graduate from Psy.D programs can also become psychometricians, but keep in mind that you may also have to become familiar with some programming, data analysis, and statistical principles to qualify.

Once you hold that doctorate, you’re ready to design your own tests and psychological assessment tools as a full-fledged psychometrician.

Psychometrician Salary Expectations

Psychometricians are an extremely niche group of professionals. As such, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t track salary data for them specifically. However, they do track data for statisticians, a broad group of professionals that leverages their mathematical and probability skills to solve issues of all kinds in just about every industry.

As of May 2023, the BLS reports that statisticians make a median salary of $104,100. The top 10% make $163,360 or more. The earning potential indicates how a doctorate can come with some real benefits.

In some metro areas, the average wage for statisticians is much higher than the national median:

Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT: $171,580.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA: $167,320.
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA: $143,080
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA: $137,600
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV: $128,220

The biggest employer of statisticians in the US is also a sector where you’re likely to find many psychometricians: the scientific research and development sector. Here, the average salary for statisticians sits at $124,310.

So while they may be part of a very small and niche part of the psychology community, if these numbers are any indication, the skills of an experienced psychometrician are highly valued in America’s scientific community.

2023 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary and employment figures for statisticians reflect national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed February 2025.