His professional academic career began at New York University (NYU), where he was assistant professor of psychology from 1983. In 1990, he joined the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as associate professor while continuing his career at NYU as visiting research associate professor.[4]
Tanaka applied himself in a wide range of fields. As a psychologist, he worked in social psychology, educational psychology[5] and cognition. In statistics, his research interests included structural equation modeling,[6]factor analysis and categorical data analysis.[4]
Due to his work with the American Psychological Association (APA) in raising awareness for ethnic minority issues in academia (Tanaka was an ethnic minority himself), the APA named their Jeffrey S. Tanaka Dissertation Award in his memory.[4][7]
In 1993, the Journal of Personality started to run a series of papers titled The Jeffrey S. Tanaka Occasional Papers in Quantitative Methods for Personality in Tanaka's memory. As of 2011, papers were still being written for the series.[8]
The works below are listed by number of times cited (descending), according to data from Google Scholar (correct as of January 2017).
Tanaka, J. S. (1993). "Multifaceted conceptions of fit in structural equation models". SAGE Focus Editions. 154: 10–39.
Tanaka, J. S. (February 1987). ""How big is big enough?": sample size and goodness of fit in structural equation models with latent variables". Child Development. 58 (1): 134–146. doi:10.2307/1130296. JSTOR1130296.
Tanaka, J. S.; Huba, G. J. (November 1989). "A general coefficient of determination for covariance structure models under arbitrary GLS estimation". British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology. 42 (2): 233–239. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8317.1989.tb00912.x.
la Du, T. J.; Tanaka, J. S. (August 1989). "Influence of sample size, estimation method, and model specification on goodness-of-fit assessments in structural equation models". Journal of Applied Psychology. 74 (4): 625–635. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.74.4.625.
^Tanaka, J. S. (February 1987). ""How big is big enough?": sample size and goodness of fit in structural equation models with latent variables". Child Development. 58 (1): 134–146. doi:10.2307/1130296. JSTOR1130296.