Dr. Valentine's curriculum vitae [PDF]
My academic training is in social psychology (Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001). I am primarily a meta-analyst, and the majority of my work involves using, explaining, and seeking to improve meta-analytic techniques as a means of helping policymakers and practitioners solve problems that affect the quality of people's lives.
Most of my substantive work involves applying these techniques to pressing educational policy issues, including, for example, effective interventions for at-risk college students, the improvement of algebra instruction, the effects of modifying school academic calendars on students' academic achievement; the impact of teacher certification type on student outcomes; and the effectiveness of postsecondary developmental education. I serve on the Boards of the Elementary School Journal and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.
At present, I serve as the Principal Investigator of the expansion of the Institute of Education Science's What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) into postsecondary education.
I have also applied my expertise to a broad range of social issues, including medicine, social welfare, and development. I am an invited member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology; the co-editor, with Harris Cooper and Larry Hedges, the second edition of the Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis, an associate editor of Research Synthesis Methods; statistical editor for the Cochrane Collaboration's, Psychological, Developmental, and Learning Problems Group; and Co-Chair of the Campbell Collaboration's Training Group. I have been invited to deliver training sessions for such international organizations as 3ie (the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation) and the Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
My training as a social psychologist has strongly influenced how I think about the world and the research enterprise. I have a keen appreciation for the ways in which we as researchers may be mislead by our own biases, predilections, and incentives into producing results that are over-aligned with our interests. My work has explored how incentives appear to bias study reports; how meta-analysis can help protect researchers and the consumers of research from less formal synthesis techniques that are more prone to bias; and how to structure research so that more judgements are made or considered prior to data collection.