Making It Better: Stuart Karabenick's Contribution to the Field of Cognitive Pretesting

As a graduate student in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan, I worked closely with Martin Maehr. Professor Maehr was a distinguished scholar in the field of achievement motivation, especially in the areas of achievement goal theory and cultural influences on motivation and achievement.¹ He had several colleagues and collaborators who would visit Ann Arbor and the offices of the Combined Program (e.g., Dennis McInerney, Carole Ames, etc.). Around my third year in the program, a bearded, soft-spoken professor who was quick to smile started to periodically appear in our office space. I was told that his name was Stuart Karabenick and that he was a Professor at Eastern Michigan University who was working with Dr. Maehr and perhaps with Paul Pintrich (an Associate Professor in the Combined Program at the time and quickly emerging as a distinguished academic himself) as well. Once I finished my doctoral studies and left Michigan, I continued to see Stuart at conferences from time to time. We exchanged pleasantries but did not have any extended conversations that I can recall for the first dozen or so years that I knew him.