Principal Scientist
Dr. Scott Oppler is a Principal Scientist at the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) in Alexandria, VA, where he has served as an in-house technical expert since July 2019. Having earned his Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1990, Dr. Oppler has been practicing in the field for over 30 years. During the first 18 years of his career, Dr. Oppler worked for the American Institutes for Research (AIR), serving most recently as Chief Methodologist for their Applied Behavioral and Social Science division. While at AIR, he served as Project Director, Principal Investigator, or Technical Advisor on a variety of applied measurement and evaluation projects for the Federal government and other clients, including the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Marshalls, and various agencies in the U.S. intelligence community.
Included among these projects was work performed for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education, for which Dr, Oppler served as Lead Psychometrician for the National Reporting System for Adult Education (NRS) and assisted in the drafting of regulations regarding the evidence required for assessments to be approved for use in the evaluation of adult learners’ educational gains. Also while at AIR, Dr. Oppler served as the Chair of the Technical Advisory Panel convened to develop the Economics assessment framework and test specifications for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and as Technical Advisor in a technical assistance project performed for the Secretaria of Education in the State of Bahia (Brazil) to support the development and implementation of a statewide system for evaluating student achievement using both formative (bi-monthly) and summative (end-of-year) assessments. Following his tenure at AIR, Dr. Oppler spent eight years at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), where he served as the Director of Development & Psychometrics for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), and four years at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), where he served as Vice President, Exam Development & Research for SHRM’s Human Resource Professional certification program.