Dr. Kaat received his Ph.D. in Psychology - Intellectual and Developmental Disorders and a secondary graduate concentration in quantitative psychology from the Ohio State University. After that, he joined the research faculty at FSM to develop and validate self- and parent-report measures and direct assessments.

Dr. Kaat is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. He has a strong background in psychometrics and child development—in particular intellectual, and developmental disorders (I/DD). His research program relates to measure development, adaptation, and validation in special populations using psychometrics and latent variable models. He is particularly interested in multiple-group item response theory (IRT), where the special populations may have a different distributional form than in the reference—i.e., general—population. At Northwestern, Dr. Kaat has emphasized psychometrics related to the instruments within the HealthMeasures suite (i.e. the NIH Toolbox, PROMIS, PROMIS Pediatric, Neuro-QoL, and ASCQ-Me).