Canadian Psychologist
Barbara M. Byrne (February 21,1935 - December 19, 2020) was a Canadian quantitative psychologist known for her work in psychometrics, specifically regarding construct validity, structural equation modeling (SEM), and statistics. She held the position of Professor Emerita in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa and was a fellow of the International Testing Committee (ITC), International Association for Applied Psychology (IAAP), and American Psychological Association (APA) throughout her research career.
Biography.
Byrne received her bachelor's degree from University of Western Ontario, and subsequently taught at multiple Canadian high schools in Western Ontario and Ottawa. She went on to receive her M.A. in Sociology from Carleton University in 1972 and her Ph.D. in Psychometrics and Statistics from University of Ottawa in 1982. At University of Ottawa, she worked under James E. Carlson, culminating in her thesis titled "A Causal Modeling Approach to Construct Validation of Self-Concept Using a Structural Equation Model." 
After receiving her doctoral degree, Byrne worked with Richard Shavelson at UCLA as a post-doctoral fellow until she returned as faculty of at University of Ottawa, where she was eventually granted the title of professor emeritus. As professor emeritus, she moved with her husband to Punta Gorda, Florida, but was still flown back by University of Ottawa to continue teaching and lecturing. 
Byrne published with Shavelson, Barry Howard Schneider, and Herb Marsh early in her career, focusing on developmental psychology with regard to education and validation studies of various assessments thereof. Byrne was recognized as a fellow of multiple agencies throughout her career by the APA, IAAP, ITC, and was granted multiple awards for her distinguished contributions to teaching, education, testing, assessment, and statistical methodology by the Canadian Psychological Association, APA, ITC, and Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP). The SMEP valued her as an outstanding member by granting her an award created and named in her honor postmortem. 
Research.
Byrne's main body of work focused on SEM and construct validity within the fields of developmental and social psychology. She published nine books, six of which focus on SEM using various softwares, leading to her award from the SMEP, and the other three focusing on more substantive investigations of society, social psychology, and the health sector. 
For a large portion of her career, Byrne studied the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), running various validation, structural, and equivalence studies on the measure from 1990 until 2007. Specifically, she looked at the validity of the BDI in foreign languages and when applied to foreign populations, such as when used in Bulgaria, Sweden, France, and Hong Kong. She also looked at validity and invariance across subgroups like gender and when the measure was applied to adolescents. 
Much of her later and most cited work was spent writing both chapters and books on SEM. Her books are some of the best selling books within the field of multivariate applications, and are primarily instructional materials for conducting SEM within various statistical softwares, including Mplus, Amos, EQS, and LISREL. She also authored "Measuring Self-Concept Across the Life Span: Issues and Instrumentation," a reference book that compiled a wide variety of models and measures of self-concept and provided summary information and empirical support for these self-concept definitions. 
References.
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