About
On July 21, 2025, the Department of Psychology lost a valued member of our community, Dr. Arthur (Ralph) Hakstian (1941 – 2025).
Dr. Hakstian was a long-serving professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where he made foundational contributions to the field of psychometrics and quantitative psychology. A respected scholar, dedicated teacher, and valued colleague, Dr. Hakstian’s work advanced the development and validation of psychological tests and measurement tools, with a particular emphasis on factor analysis and multivariate statistics.
Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Hakstian was known not only for his rigorous and innovative research but also for his mentorship and generosity. He mentored his students with care and continued to publish and collaborate with them on consulting projects after their graduation. His commitment to academic excellence and intellectual curiosity shaped generations of students and researchers.
His scholarship included innovations in methods for multivariate statistics including correlation analysis, factor analysis, and scale development. Dedicated to the field of industrial/organizational psychology, his work also extended to areas of research in education, personality, forensic psychology, cognition, perception, and health behaviours.
Teaching
Research
Research interests include industrial/organizational psychology, with an emphasis on personnel psychology, psychometric methods, advanced statistical methods.
Publications
Barchard, K. A. & Hakstian, A. R. (2004). The nature and measurement of emotional intelligence abilities: Basic dimensions and their relationships with other cognitive-ability and personality variables. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64, 437-462.
Hakstian, A. R., Farrell, S., & Tweed, R. G. (2002). The assessment of counterproductive tendencies by means of the California Psychological Inventory. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 10, 58-86.
Scratchley, L. S., & Hakstian. A. R. (2001). The measurement and prediction of managerial creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 13, 367-384.
Farrell, S., & Hakstian, A. R. (2001). Improving salesforce performance: A meta-analytic investigation of the effectiveness and utility of personnel selection procedures and training interventions. Psychology & Marketing, 18, 281-316.
Hakstian, A. R., & Farrell, S. (2001). An openness scale for the California Psychological Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 76, 107-134.
Hakstian, A. R., & Barchard, K. A. (2000). Toward more robust inferential procedures for coefficient alpha under sampling of both subjects and conditions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 35, 427-456.
Barchard, K. A., & Hakstian A. R. (1997). The robustness of confidence intervals for coefficient alpha under violation of the assumption of essential parallelism. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 32, 169-191.
Hakstian, A. R., Scratchley, L. S., MacLeod, A. a., Tweed, R. G., & Siddarth, S. (1997). Selection of telemarketing employees by standardized assessment procedure. Psychology & Marketing, 14, 703-726.