Dr David Hegarty
Head of Psychometrics, NovoPsych | Psychologist
BA (Psych), BEd, MHSc, PhD, MAPS
Dr David Hegarty is a psychologist and psychometrician who leads NovoPsych's Psychometrics Team. His work is about turning the research literature into measurement clinicians can actually use in a session: defensible norms, scoring that holds up statistically, and interpretive text that says something useful about the person in front of the clinician.
He joined NovoPsych in 2021 as Senior Data Analyst and Psychologist and has been Head of Psychometrics since 2024. In that time he has built or reviewed the scoring, norms and interpretive logic behind around 160 assessments in the NovoPsych library, covering diagnosis and screening, symptom tracking, personality, wellbeing and functioning.
Before moving into psychometrics full time, David spent close to two decades working with children and adolescents, first as a teacher and then as a school and private practice psychologist across Sydney. That background shapes how he approaches measurement. He is interested in whether a score changes what a clinician does next, not only in whether the model fits.
Areas of expertise
Psychometric theory and applied measurement, including item response theory (IRT), computerised adaptive testing (CAT), factor analysis and reliability estimation; test norming and re-standardisation, including regression-based approaches for Australian populations; the design of scoring and interpretive text systems for clinical reporting; psychological assessment of children and adolescents, including ADHD, autism, anxiety and behavioural presentations; and statistical programming and data analysis in R.
Recent articles by Dr David Hegarty
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS)
Professional registration & membership
Registered Psychologist with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Member of the Australian Psychological Society (MAPS).
Academic appointment
Adjunct Professional Fellow, Southern Cross University (2024 – present).
Clinical and educational experience
David has worked with children, adolescents and families for close to twenty years, in schools and in private practice.
He began as a classroom teacher and grade academic coordinator, then qualified as a psychologist and moved into school psychology, holding that role alongside a position integrating technology across the school. Over the following decade he worked as a school psychologist and school counsellor across independent and community schools in Sydney, from primary to senior secondary, and as a psychologist at PsychEd, a Sydney practice specialising in psychological and educational assessment for children and adolescents.
Across those roles his work centred on cognitive and educational assessment, screening and identification of mental health and developmental concerns in young people, and translating assessment findings into recommendations that teachers and families could act on.
Leadership
As Head of Psychometrics, David leads NovoPsych's Psychometrics Team. The team is responsible for scale development, scoring and norming, interpretive reporting, and the technical review program that documents the evidence behind each measure. He sets the measurement standards the platform is built on, supervises the psychometricians and research staff who apply them, and reviews new and revised assessments before they are released to clinicians.
Research
David completed his PhD at the University of Sydney, where his research examined computerised adaptive cognitive training. That work sits directly upstream of his current interest in adaptive testing and efficient measurement.
His research interests now include: the psychometric properties and clinical utility of widely used self-report and informant-report scales; norming and re-standardisation of public-domain instruments for Australian populations; hierarchical and dimensional models of psychopathology and how they can be made usable in routine practice; the measurement burden that assessment places on clients, including how long instruments actually take to complete; and the design of automated interpretive reporting.
Assessments and measurement systems developed
David is a co-author of the Maladaptive Schema Scale (MSS), a 108-item measure of 27 maladaptive schemas published in Assessment; a co-author of the Cosmetic Readiness Questionnaire (CRQ), a preoperative psychological screening tool for aesthetic procedures; and a co-developer of the NovoPsych Five Factor Personality Scale – 30 item version (NFFPS-30), a short-form personality measure that recovers the five domains and thirty facets of the IPIP-NEO-120 from a fifth of the items.
Beyond named scales, much of his output is the measurement infrastructure behind the platform: the scoring algorithms, norm tables, percentile conversions, cut-point logic and automated interpretive text for around 160 assessments. These include a substantial set of child and adolescent instruments such as the SDQ, SCAS (child and parent), SCARED, DASS-Y, Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17, Vanderbilt ADHD rating scales, Preschool Anxiety Scale, and the WHODAS Child and Youth version, alongside adult measures including the DASS family, PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, PID-5, IPIP-NEO-120, WHODAS 2.0 and the B-HiTOP.
Selected publications
- Pennesi, J., Edney, L., Zhou, Y., Hegarty, D. L., Buchanan, B., & Wade, T. D. (2026). Psychometric evaluation of the Eating Disorder-15 (ED-15): Factor structure, measurement invariance, and eating disorder caseness in treatment seekers. International Journal of Eating Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.70202
- Reuben, K., Kate, M.-A., Hegarty, D. L., & Buchanan, B. (2026). Clinical evidence for increased dissociative experiences in adults with high levels of autistic traits: A comparative study. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2026.2713775
- Kate, M.-A., Swinfield, H., Hegarty, D. L., Buchanan, B., & Dorahy, M. J. (2026). Validation of the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation-60 (MID-60) items in a clinical population. Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911261462453
- Buchanan, B., Bartholomew, E., Smyth, C., & Hegarty, D. (2025). The Maladaptive Schema Scale (MSS): Development and validation of a comprehensive questionnaire for beliefs related to psychopathology. Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911251390083
- Hill, S., Kate, M.-A., Hegarty, D. L., & Buchanan, B. (2025). Exploring the complex relationship between anxiety and dissociation in a clinical population. Australian Psychologist, 60, 509–525. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050067.2025.2567676
- Pikoos, T. D., Buchanan, B., Hegarty, D., & Rossell, S. L. (2024). The Cosmetic Readiness Questionnaire (CRQ): Validation of a preoperative psychological screening tool for aesthetic procedures. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 45, 208–214. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjae207
- Pikoos, T. D., Buchanan, B., Hegarty, D., & Rossell, S. L. (2024). Development of a preoperative psychological screening tool: Piloting the Cosmetic Readiness Questionnaire (Pilot-CRQ). Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 45, 202–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjae187
Selected technical reviews
- Hegarty, D. L., & Kaufman, H. (2026). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the International Personality Item Pool – NEO – 120 item version (IPIP-NEO-120): Gender-specific norms, percentile rankings, and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QSGPD
- Hegarty, D., Forbes, M. K., Buchanan, B., Smyth, C., Baker, S., & Bartholomew, E. (2025). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the Brief Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (B-HiTOP): Norms, percentile rankings, and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U5WD8
- Kate, M.-A., & Hegarty, D. L. (2026). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation – 60-item version (MID-60): Norms, percentile rankings, and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/E83KC
- Kaufman, H., & Hegarty, D. (2026). A review of the Manic and Depression Symptoms Paired Screening (PMQ-9 and PHQ-9): Clinical utility, normative data and interpretive guidelines. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XQ6GS
- Menzies, R. E., & Hegarty, D. L. (2025). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviours Scale (DABBS): Percentile rankings and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/JGP5A
- Phillips, J. R., Buchanan, B., Hegarty, D., & Kaufman, H. (2025). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory – Revised (OCI-R): Community and clinical norms, percentile rankings, and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BUANP
- Baker, S., Kaufman, H., Wotherspoon, J., Buchanan, B., & Hegarty, D. (2026). A review of the clinical utility and psychometric properties of the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham Rating Scale (SNAP-IV) – 18 item version: Percentile rankings and qualitative descriptors. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4HXRJ
- Buchanan, B., & Hegarty, D. (2023). Development of a short personality assessment: The NovoPsych Five Factor Personality Scale – 30 item version. https://novopsych.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NFFPS-30-article-NovoPsych-website-version.pdf
Webinars & professional development
David has presented NovoPsych professional development webinars including:
- Systematic Assessment of Psychopathology: Screening for What Often Goes Unseen, with Dr Simon Baker
- Assessing Children and Adolescents: Effective Screening and Identification, with Dr Jane Wotherspoon
- Maladaptive Schema Scale: Advancements in Schema Questionnaires, with Dr Carla Smyth
- The Maladaptive Schema Scale: An Introduction
- Seeing the Bigger Picture: Leveraging Outcome Data for Insightful Practice, with Dr Ben Buchanan
Contribution to NovoPsych
David's aim is that a clinician reading a NovoPsych report can rely on both the number and the sentence next to it. That means being conservative about what a norm can support, explicit about the limits of an instrument, and willing to say less in an interpretation when the evidence is thin. He works to keep the platform's measurement grounded in the published literature rather than in convention.
"For me psychometrics is the perfect mix of rigorous science and psychological theory synthesised into measurement tools that are useful in the real world."