About us

The E-Metrixx team is lead by Paul Irwing and David Walters.
Professor Paul Irwing
Professor of Psychometrics at Alliance Manchester Business School and Editor of the Wiley Handbook of Psychometric Testing

Paul Irwing, Chairman of The Psychometrics at Work Research Group at Manchester Business School, is a world-leading psychometrician at Manchester Business School. He has over 30 years achievement in research specialising in Individual Differences and quantifiable measurement through psychometrics.

He is the co-founder of the developmental theory of sex differences and has recently pioneered work on the General Factor of Personality, which is seen as being a generic predictor of life outcomes, including work performance, closely analogous to the General Factor of Human Cognitive Ability. For the past three years he has been working on the Eleven Factor Model of personality with Tom Booth.

Professor Irwing was first appointed as an Organisational Psychologist in 1977 at the University of Ulster. In 2003, he joined UMIST (now The University of Manchester and Manchester Business School) as a lecturer in Organisational Psychology and in 2004 he was promoted to senior lecturer and then to Reader, in 2007.

He has recently been appointed as Director of Research Training for the Doctoral Programme at Manchester Business School. The Doctoral Programme at Manchester Business School is rated number 1 in the world by the Financial Times.

His D.Phil. was completed in 1992 and integrated goal-setting, job characteristics and self-concept theories of work motivation.

Professor Irwing is an editor of Intelligence which is the leading international journal for the study of individual differences and his work has been quoted over 400 times in learned journals. Currently he has a total of 79 publications including 33 articles in leading scientific journals, and has presented 42 conference papers.

His work has been presented in six articles in Intelligence (Impact Factor (IF) 3.76), two articles in the British Journal of Psychology (IF: 2.28), three articles in the British Journal of Educational Psychology (IF: 2.13), eleven articles in Personality and Individual Differences (IF: 1.98), while single articles have appeared in the Journal of Research in Personality (IF: 2.82), European Journal of Personality (IF: 2.79), Twin Research and Human Genetics (IF:2.14) and in the pre-eminent science journal Nature (IF: 31.2, all impact factors from Web of Science).

Current work from Professor Irwing is comprised of four main research programmes: (1) Financial Risk; (2) The Nature and Structure of Personality; (3) Predicting Business Success; (4) Sex Differences.

David Walters, FMSc FCIM
Creative

David Walters leads E-METRIXX and is a Commercial Director of the Psychometrics at Work Research Group at Manchester Business School.

Following his MSc in Marketing at UMIST under Professor Roland Smith, David trained with Kimberly-Clark in Brand Management specialising in New Product Development. David then moved to Cussons UK to gain experience in the highly fragmented toiletries market. During his time there, he was responsible for the development and launch of Imperial Leather Shower and Pearl Soap; both becoming brand leaders within their respective categories.

Following 5 years in industry, David moved into creative consultancy, becoming a Director of Clark Hooper in Scotland before creating his own consultancies: Blue-Chip Marketing and Strategic Advantage. As Creative Director, David has created, directed and evaluated 100’s of campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands including Andrex, Baxters, Kellogg’s, Kleenex, Lego, Reebok, Royal Sun Alliance, Scottish & Newcastle Breweries and many more. 

In addition to running product development and creative strategy within E-Metrixx, David continues to consult on client projects working with a small number of marketing consultancies and is a guest speaker on Entrepreneurialism, Strategy and New Product Development at Manchester Business School.