Dr. Culbertson is a research scientist on the EdSHARe project with expertise in psychological measurement and research design. Dr. Culbertson received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, as well as an Ed.M. in International Educational Development from Boston University. He is currently based in the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Culbertson is a mixed-methods social science research methodologist with a focus in education. His research and evaluation work has encompassed a variety of educational programs, including the educational programming of a national cyberinfrastructure organization, an assessment of the health education needs of university STEM students, an impact evaluation of an adult agricultural education program, and national evaluations of two financial literacy programs. He has developed and validated scales for measuring a number of psychological characteristics, including locus of control, self-efficacy, future orientation, risk tolerance, volubility, and health education needs, and attitudes and behaviors in a variety of educationally relevant domains. At Education Analytics, he led the development of an advanced statistical prediction system to identify students in grades 3–12 who are not yet on track for college success.
Before joining EdSHARe, Dr. Culbertson was the co-PI of a study of post-secondary classroom discussion, developing a new suite of instruments to measure the quality of classroom discussion and instructor practice.