Announcing the Schmidt-Hunter Meta-Analysis Award

Milton D. Hakel

Frank Schmidt has provided the leadership to create a new endowment in the SIOP Foundation.  The Schmidt-Hunter Fund will support the Schmidt-Hunter Meta-Analysis Award. It will recognize the best advances related to industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology as documented in published research in which meta-analysis is used. The new award will be given by SIOP for the first time in 2017.

Let’s start with some comments about our history and our aspirations for I-O practice and science.  My generation entered the field when Thomas Kuhn was writing The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).   Already well aware of the role of peer review and consensus in scientific progress, I was attracted by the notion of a paradigm shift, and I hoped that I could experience one during the course of my career. 

Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was clear to us that validity correlations varied a lot, and we easily attributed that variation to situational differences.  When Frank Schmidt and Jack Hunter began writing about validity generalization, and attributing the variance in validity correlations to statistical artifacts, we were deeply skeptical, but indeed a paradigm shift had begun. 

Decades later the acceptance and widespread use of meta-analysis marked the completion of the paradigm shift, and meta-analysis now is a fundamental tool that we use readily to refine our scientific thinking and practical applications.  At the SIOP Conference in Philadelphia last year, Frank received the inaugural Dunnette Prize, clear and distinct recognition of the immense contribution to our field and science in general made by Frank and Jack’s work.

Looking to the future, the Schmidt-Hunter Award will recognize the best meta-analysis published in the previous 3 calendar years.  The meta-analysis can be in any area of I-O psychology or in another discipline or subdiscipline if there are potential implications for I-O psychology, even if such implications are long term or remote.  Articles that make important contributions to statistical, measurement, and mathematical methods in meta-analysis can also be considered for the award. Nominations may be made by any current member of SIOP and may be self-nominations.  The award will be given each year and will carry a cash honorarium of $1,500. 

Now for some comments about philanthropy, one important practice for building our field of applied science.  Paradigms shift rarely, and indeed they are built upon the day-to-day R&D conducted within the field.  Frank’s paradigm-shifting scholarship and also his generosity in establishing this $75,000 endowment are outstanding examples for each of us. 

Regardless of whether you are engaged in day-to-day R&D or the shifting of paradigms, there will never be a better time than now to give your time and money.  Help to encourage practice and research based on cumulative evidence; it is the key to the future of I-O psychology.  The SIOP Foundation would like to be among your beneficiaries.  Contribute at http://0-www-siop-org.library.alliant.edu/foundation/donate.aspx.   

Set a plan and act on it.  Frank Schmidt did, and you can too.  Your calls and questions to the SIOP Foundation are always welcome, as are gifts of any size.  Join us in building the smarter workplace. 

Milt Hakel, President mhakel@bgsu.edu, (419) 819 0936

Rich Klimoski, Vice-President rklimosk@gmu.edu (703) 993 1828

Nancy Tippins, Secretary ntippins@executiveboard.com (864) 527 5956

Paul Thayer pthayer2@att.net (919) 467 2880

Leaetta Hough leaetta@msn.com (651) 227 4888

Adrienne Colella acolella@tulane.edu (504) 865 5308

Bill Macey wmacey9@gmail.com (847) 751 1409

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