Dr Paula Cruise

Dr Paula Cruise was a Research Associate at the Psychometrics Centre within the (then) Faculty of Social and Political Sciences between 2007 and 2009 and a Visiting Lecturer within the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. As a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, she combines academic research with applied consultancy and experience in professional training and development. Paula's research adopts a socio-cognitive approach to applied assessment and focuses on the interaction between individual psychological processes (personality, attitudes and motivations), culture, team and leader effectiveness.

Paula holds an honours degree in Psychology and International Relations from the University of West Indies, Jamaica where she was a national Emancipation Scholar. She followed this with an MSc and PhD in Occupational Psychology at London Guildhall and City University, London respectively. Using theories of decision-making and social cognition, her PhD thesis investigated cultural differences in psychometric employee assessment practice and selection behaviours of job applicants, HR practitioners and managers. While in the Psychometrics Centre she was lead psychologist on projects adapting European psychometric tests for the English-speaking market and organisational context.

Paula played a significant role in the Psychometrics Centre’s assessment projects with established psychometric tests. Commissioned by the ECPA (Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquee), the French subsidiary of Pearson Assessment, Paula project managed the translation and validation from French to English for the D5D (an ipsative work based personality test) and the TD-12 (an assessment of personality disorders), two popular psychometric tests developed in France. Paula and her team conducted the research that led to UK Standardised manuals for both tests.

Paula has been a researcher at the London Business School working with Dr. Lisa Moynihan on team personality, composition and goal achievement and has had teaching positions at University College, London and at City University, London where, prior to joining The Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge gave lectures on the MSc in Organisational Psychology at City University, London.  Whilst at Cambridge, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Criminology where she collaborated with Dr. Mandeep Dhami to investigate public and prisoner attitudes to prisoner disenfranchisement. Published in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, the research was the first to examine this growing global and legal issue from both the prisoner and public perspectives and identified significant differences in perceptions, motivations and consequences for voting behaviour and democracy.

In addition to her contribution as a reviewer on a range of organisational behaviour, psychology and assessment journals, Paula was organizer of the 16th International Meeting of the Psychometric Society hosted by The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge in 2009, and ran The Psychometrics Centre's training courses for the BPS Certificates of Competence in Occupational Testing at both Level A (ability testing) and Level B (personality testing) in 2008 and 2009. Paula is a member of the American Psychological Association Division 14 Society for Industrial Organisational Psychologists and the Psychometrics Society, an Associate at the Royal Society of Medicine and a registered practitioner with the Health Care Professions Council (UK).   She is a verified test assessor and currently serves on the BPS Committee for Occupational, Forensic and Educational Assessment.