The Cattell Legacy
 IPAT's esteemed founder, Raymond B. Cattell, Ph.D. received several awards throughout his life for achievement in the field of measurement and personality. Often recognized as the father of trait personality measurement, his lifetime work involved developing a comprehensive structure for predicting human behavior through the use of multivariate factor analysis.
While effects on the field of psychology of one individual's writings are difficult to quantify, it is clear that Cattell's research has contributed immensely to the breadth and depth of modern scientific psychology, both directly through his voluminous writings and research evidence, and by way of hundreds of colleagues and students around the world with whom he worked.
Originally trained as a physical scientist, Cattell was attracted to Charles Spearman's factor analysis methods and applied them extensively, often conducting grueling procedures by hand. Dr. Cattell's achievements, research, and legacy contribution to the field of personality psychology has been recognized many times over. Most notable was his nomination by the American Psychological Foundation for the Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievements in Psychological Science at the 1997 APA Annual Convention.
Dr. Cattell also received, posthumously, the Marguerite R. Hertz Memorial Award presented by the Society for Personality Assessment at their midwinter 2003 meeting. This award recognized Dr. Cattell's lifetime contribution to the field of personality assessment and measurement. Dr. Cattell's legacy and rich body of work as well as the ongoing contribution of his family, are still contributing to the improvement of IPAT's tools and services.
Dr. Cattell wanted to determine the fundamental building blocks of human personality using factor analytical methods. At the University of London, Cattell worked with Dr. Spearman, who was developing the commonly used methods of factor analysis to identify and organize the basic elements of human ability. It was while assisting Spearman that Cattell began using these same methods to analyze human personality. His thinking was that if the basic elements of personality could be identified, then human behavior could become better understood and predicted. In this comprehensive research on personality, Cattell emphasized sufficient sampling of the entire domain of personality and used multiple methods (peer ratings, self-report tests, objective behavioral measures) and a wide range of populations (undergraduates, military personnel, working adults) in data collection.
Cattell then systematically analyzed the entire range of personality trait descriptors present in the English language, beginning with Allport and Odbert's lexical database. Through a series of factor analytic studies, Cattell reduced the multitude of descriptors to 16 underlying dimensions that became the primary factors of the 16PF Questionnaire. Originally published in 1949, the 16PF Questionnaire is the original, comprehensive measure of normal personality based on systematic, scientific research. Extensions of this research also provide the foundation for today's commonly accepted "Big 5".
Cattell collaborated with E.L. Thorndike at Columbia; with Murray, White and Allport at Harvard University; and with Lee Cronbach at the University of Illinois. He also worked closely with his wives, Karen Cattell, and later, Heather Birkett Cattell, Ph.D., as well as daughters Mary Cattell, Heather E.P. Cattell, Ph.D., and son Rick Cattell, Ph.D. All have made major authorship contributions as well as provided help with establishing, operating, and overseeing company direction at IPAT through the years.
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