Sandip Sinharay

Sandip Sinharay
TitleLinda Cook Chair in the Science of Measurement
AwardsAward for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement
Academic background
EducationIowa State University
Indian Statistical Institute
ThesisVariance Component Testing for Generalized Linear Mixed Models (2001)
Academic work
DisciplineStatistics
Psychometrics
Education
InstitutionsEducational Testing Service

Sandip Sinharay is an Indian-born statistician and psychometrician specializing in educational measurement. He holds the title of Linda Cook Chair in the Science of Measurement at Educational Testing Service (ETS) and is the Executive Editor of Psychometrika.

Academic background

Sinharay is a statistician who attended the Iowa State University and the Indian Statistical Institute.

Career

Sinharay conducts academic work in the disciplines of statistics, psychometrics, and educational measurement, primarily addressing issues related to the quality of test scores. Over his career, he has held various research positions and editorial roles in journals in the field of educational measurement and psychometrics, including serving as editor of the Journal of Educational Measurement and the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. In 2025, he was awarded the Award for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement by the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). He has also been recognized for his work “promising to make a substantive contribution to the field of educational measurement,” and for research on item response theory model data fit that provides techniques with practical benefits for testing programs.

Published works and reception

Sinharay is a co-author of the book Subscores: A Practical Guide to Their Production and Consumption (Cambridge University Press). The book received an independent review in the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, where Mark Reckase noted that the book is "a valuable resource for all the target audiences", though he questioned whether creating subscores was comparable to "making a silk purse from a sow’s ear".

In 2007, Sinharay co-edited the Handbook of Statistics, Volume 26: Psychometrics (Elsevier) alongside C. R. Rao. The volume, which covers foundational and modern developments in educational measurement and psychometrics including item response theory, was described by reviewer R. J. de Ayala in the Journal of the American Statistical Association as a significant resource for the field, noting its comprehensive coverage of both theory and practical applications in large-scale testing.

Sinharay's methodological work on test equating and related statistical procedures has been referenced in the educational measurement literature and is discussed in textbooks including Test Equating, Scaling, and Linking: Methods and Practices by Michael Kolen and Robert Brennan.

Public commentary

There was an article in the Bengali newspaper Anandabazar Patrika in 2023 about ragging at Indian engineering colleges. In the article, Sinharay was interviewed about his 1991 ragging incident that led to his leaving the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, a few days after joining the institute.

References

  1. ↑ "ETS Research Chairs". Retrieved 2026-01-01.
  2. ↑ "New Executive Editor for Psychometrika". Retrieved 2026-01-03.
  3. ↑ "Doctoral Degrees Conferred 2001-2002" (PDF). Retrieved 2026-01-04.
  4. 1 2 "Victims of Ragging". Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). August 19, 2023. Retrieved February 4, 2026.
  5. ↑ "Award Abstract # 2243041: Statistical and Psychometric Methods for Measuring the Extent to Which Culturally Responsive Assessments Reduce Cultural Bias". National Science Foundation. Retrieved 20 January 2026.
  6. ↑ "11/26 COPSS-NISS Leadership Webinar: Leadership at the Intersection of Statistics and Psychometrics". National Institute of Statistical Sciences. NISS. 26 November 2024. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  7. ↑ "President's Message – December 2018". Retrieved 2026-10-28.
  8. ↑ "Editors Appointed for JEBS". Retrieved 2026-01-01.
  9. ↑ "2025 Awards". National Council on Measurement in Education. NCME. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  10. ↑ "NCME Newsletter – June 2018" (PDF). National Council on Measurement in Education. June 2018. Retrieved 2026-02-26.
  11. ↑ "NCME Newsletter – June 2015" (PDF). National Council on Measurement in Education. June 2015. Retrieved 2026-02-26.
  12. ↑ Reckase, Mark D. "Are Creating Subscores Like "Making a Silk Purse From a Sow's Ear": A Review of Subscores by S. Haberman, S. Sinharay, R. A. Feinberg, and H. Wainer". Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. doi:10.3102/10769986251336444.
  13. ↑ de Ayala, R. J. (2009). "Review of Handbook of Statistics 26: Psychometrics". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 104 (487): 1270–1271. doi:10.1198/jasa.2009.br0909.
  14. ↑ Kolen, Michael; Brennan, Robert (2014). Test Equating, Scaling, and Linking: Methods and Practices (3rd ed.). Springer. p. 387.