Biography
Before coming to UO, George Harrison was a faculty member at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for 10 years, serving as an associate professor in educational psychology and as an evaluator for the College of Education’s research unit. He has taught courses in measurement, survey-research methods, statistics, and quasi-experimental designs and has mentored graduate students, chairing two dissertations and serving on 12 master’s and doctoral level committees. He has developed introductory materials for helping students learn R statistical language and has guided students in how to develop and evaluate validity arguments in measurement and research. As an evaluator, he has lead projects that have ranged from evaluating an IES funded science professional-development intervention to conducting state-level needs assessments in career and technical education. Informing his perspective is his 10 years’ earlier experience as a teacher of English language learners, both abroad and in the US. He serves on the international review board of the Journal of Environmental Education and has published in Metacognition and Learning and Journal of Educational Measurement.
As director of the EDUC program of courses, Dr. Harrison teaches research methods, statistics, and evaluation and oversees the EDUC curriculum to strengthen the quality of education provided to our students across the college.
Education
Ph.D., 2013, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Major: Educational Psychology
Major Professor: Paul R. Brandon
M.A., 2002, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Major: Second Language Studies
B.A., University of California Santa Cruz
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Publications
Harrison, G. M. (2021). Validity arguments with survey scales. In U. Luhanga & A. G. Harbaugh (Eds.), Basic elements of survey research in education: Addressing the problems your advisor never told you about (pp. 627–658). Information Age Publishing.
Harrison, G. M., & Azama, K. A. (2020). Survey research methods: Preparing a validity argument. Education in the Health Professions, 3(3), 87–92. https://doi.org/10.4103/EHP.EHP_32_20
Harrison, G. M. (2020). Validity evidence against the children’s New Ecological Paradigm Scale. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2019.1646202
Harrison, G. M., & Vallin, L. M. (2018). Evaluating the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory using empirical factor-structure evidence. Metacognition and Learning, 13(1), 15–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-017-9176-z
Harrison, G. M., Duncan Seraphin, K., Philippoff, J., Vallin, L. M., & Brandon, P. R. (2015). Comparing models of nature of science dimensionality based on the Next Generation Science Standards. International Journal of Science Education, 37(8), 1321–1342. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2015.1035357
Harrison, G. M. (2015). Non-numeric intrajudge consistency feedback in an Angoff procedure. Journal of Educational Measurement, 52(4), 399–418. https://doi.org/10.1111/jedm.12092
Research
Dr. Harrison’s scholarly work is on validity in measurement and survey research. Driving his passion is the development of materials to help students develop and critique validity arguments that are inherent in research and evaluation.