Leadership Team

Patrick Wadlington, Director of Research & Development:

Patrick L Wadlington joined Birkman in 2006. He serves as the Director of Research and Development focusing on psychological measurement and test development. He leads the Birkman R&D staff in psychometric services, research initiatives, and client-specific customized solutions. Patrick researches and develops innovative quantitative methods for cognitive, social perception, occupational interest, and personality test development and validation. He specializes in integrating Classical, Item Response, and Measurement Decision test theory to produce web-based computer-adapted testing instruments for personnel selection and organizational development purposes. Additionally, Patrick is responsible for conducting, presenting, and publishing psychological research for applied and academic audiences. Furthermore, as part of the leadership team, he works with the R&D team to resolve clients’ psychometric and application issues. Peripheral to the workplace arena, his research themes include developing educational instruments to measure learning disabilities within children and adults, to obtain optimal alignment between teachers’ teaching styles and children's learning styles, and to increase job satisfaction and retention of teachers in the public school system.

Patrick received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology with a minor in Quantitative Psychology/Psychometrics as well as Labor and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He also received his Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at UIUC and his Bachelors in Psychology at Louisiana State University.

Patrick is an active member of numerous professional organizations and regularly presents at several of their international conferences each year. These organizations include, but are not limited to, the following: Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), American Psychological Association (APA), Academy of Management (AOM), Association of Psychological Science (APS), American Education Research Association (AERA), National Counsel on Measurement in Education (NCME), Association of Test Publishers (ATP), Houston Area Industrial and Organizational Psychologists (HAIOP), and International Dyslexia Association (IDA). In addition to presentations and panel discussions, Patrick has published numerous white papers and articles in psychological and educational peer-reviewed journals including, but not limited to the following: Academic Exchange Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Reading Improvement. You can contact Patrick at pwadlington@birkman.com.