Thomas Eckes
Psychometrics and Language Testing Research

Deputy Director

Thomas Eckes studied psychology at the University of the Saarland (Saarbrücken, Germany). Following his Doctoral Dissertation (Dr.phil., 1981) and his Habilitation (1989), he first was Research Fellow of the German Science Foundation (DFG) in Saarbrücken and then was appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Wuppertal. From 1994 to 2001, he held temporary professorships in psychology at the Universities of Wuppertal, Duisburg, Dresden, and Jena, where he taught courses on quantitative research methods, cognitive psychology, and social psychology.

In 2001, he joined the TestDaF Institute, Germany. He holds the position of Deputy Director and is Head of Psychometrics and Language Testing Research.

His current research interests: Psychometric modeling of language competencies; item response theory; many-facet Rasch measurement; rater behavior and rater effects; test fairness; standard-setting methods; item banking; construct validation of C-tests; IRT-based analysis of C-tests; development and validation of online placement tests (onSET).

Thomas Eckes has published widely in peer-review journals and contributed numerous papers in edited volumes. His book Introduction to Many-Facet Rasch Measurement (Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) appeared in 2015 in a second, expanded edition (241 pages). He is on the Editorial Boards of the journals Language Testing and SAGE Open. At the beginning of March 2019, he received the inaugural Language Testing Reviewer of the Year Award. Recently, he was awarded the British Council International Assessment Award 2021.

Publications and Conference Presentations