Colin Cooper

Title: Public Perceptions, Scientific Rigour and Professional Responsibilities in testing

Colin Cooper graduated in Psychology from the University of Exeter, worked for the UK Ministry of Defence selecting pilots, and then returned to Exeter for his PhD and postdoctoral work. He moved to the University of Ulster in Coleraine (1986), and to The Queen’s University of Belfast in 1992 where he is currently Director of Education in the School of Psychology. He lectures in the areas of personality, intelligence and psychometrics/assessment and has published 60+ papers in international journals, mainly in the areas of individual differences and psychometrics. He edited Processes in Individual Differences and wrote Intelligence & Abilities and Individual Differences (now in its 2^nd edition) and Test the Nation: The IQ book. His research interests include the development of a novel method of factor analysis which does not involve rotation algorithms, the relationship of reflex latency to general intelligence, and the possible role of attention in explaining the correlation between intelligence and inspection time/reaction time. He is associate editor of the journal Individual Differences.

Non-psychologists in the UK, Japan and Ireland will know his face from the 2002-2007 TV programmes 'Test the Nation' for which he developed and standardised the IQ tests used in the UK and Ireland and advised on the construction of the tests used in the other programmes.