Finding Tests and Instruments

General information on tests and measurements

Tests and measurements are used in many professions to measure attributes of human behavior. This guide is geared toward psychological, sociological and educational tests, which may be published or unpublished:

• Unpublished: Typically, tests that are not yet widely used and may not have established validity and reliability. Such tools are sometimes printed in articles or books.
• Published: Widely-used tests with established validity, reliability and norms; usually commercially published and must be ordered or purchased from a publisher

Specific tests and measurements can be very difficult to find. In many cases, you will find only a discussion of the test, not the test itself.

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI)

• Database of citations to over 15,000 testing/evaluation instrumentsto in health, the psychosocial sciences, organizational behavior, and library and information science
• Uses controlled vocabulary descriptors from APAs Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms and the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).
• Includes citations since 1985. ( does not include actual tests )
• Updated quarterly
• Search by author, title (test name), or keyword or phrase describing the attribute(s) you wish to measure
• Limits available include:
  • Primary Source -- original instrument development or modification/adaptation
  • Secondary Source -- use or application of existing instrument; provides original source information
  • Latest Update -- restricts retrieval to documents that were most recently added to the database; new documents added quarterly

PsycINFO

• This database, authored by the American Psychological Association, indexes and abstracts psychological literature since 1872.
  
• If you don’t know the name of the test(s) you seek, type in the topic you want to find a test for. After you have preformed the initial search chose more limits. Under more limits, chose test and measure and click 'limit a search' .
  
• You can also do a basic search and search appended as a keyword. This will take you to the Subject Headings that are specific to test and measurements. At this point, choose Measurement and check the explode box. Click Continue and then Combine with the result set of the topic you are searching for.

CINAHL

• CINAHL ( Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature), includes journal citations covering the fields of nursing and the allied health sciences since 1982.
• Run your search for a topic or test name
• Limit to ‘questionnaire/scales’ or 'research instrument' in the ‘publication type’ field. ( you can choose multiple limits by holding down the control key and clicking on the term at the same time)
• Hit search at the bottom of the page.
• You can also restrict your results to validity, reliability, or other information by searching any aspect you wish to find as a keyword and combining it with your earlier search

MEDLINE

• MEDLINE is produced by the National Library of Medicine and contains citations to articles from over 3,900 international, biomedical journal titles
• Goes back to 1966.
• Perform a keyword or subject search for yout topic
• Do a second search for data collection (choose to explode 'data collection')
• Combine the two searches

PubMed PubMed is freely available to the public.

• PubMed is the free version of MEDLINE.
• Produced by the National Library of Medicine and contains citations to articles from over 3,900 international, biomedical journal titles
• Goes back to 1966.
• Run your search in PubMed as you usually would. and combine it with different combinations of subject headings

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) Ebsco

• Education database authored by the U.S. Department of Education and containing citations to and abstracts for over 19,000 journal articles and grey literature citations regarding tests and measurements.
• Limit to ‘Tests/Questionnaires’ in the Advanced Search feature.
• Search by keyword, author, test title, subject and more.

ETS Test Link Free access to all.

• Provides information on standardized educational tests
• Search by test title, author, subject (‘descriptor’), year and more.
• Use an asterisk (*) to search word roots.

Mental Measurements Yearbook & Supplement Series Free access to all.

• Provides information on test and measurement reviews included in the print version
• Acess the indexes of volumes 9 and beyond online of this 16-volume series to see if they include info on the test you seek
• HS/HSL has a complete set of these volumes in its Reference Test Collection at LB1131 .B96 

• Find many of our print test and measurement resources in a section of Reference called the Reference Test Collection.
• Some measurement instruments are located at the Reserve Desk. See the blue binder in the Reference Test Collection to get a listing of and the call numbers for those instruments.
• For finding tests themselves, start with:
  • Tests in Print (LB3051 .T34):
    • Contains info on all commercially published tests in education and psychology
    • Info includes:
      • Test title
      • Intended population
      • Publication date
      • Author
      • Adaptations
      • References
    • Does not include tests themselves or reviews
    • Indexed by:
      • Subject
      • Test title
      • Publisher
    • Author (including corporate author)
    • Publisher
• For finding test reviews or descriptive information:
  • Mental Measurement Yearbooks ( LB1131.B96 )
    • Contains reviews of tests
  • Tests (see call number below)
    • Contains info on tests in the areas of pscyhology, education and business
    • Includes:
      • test description
      • author
      • intended population
      • purpose
      • major test features
      • cost and availability
      • test publisher(s)
    • Divided into 3 secions: pscyhology, education and business; tests arranged alphabetically within these sections
    • Indexes include:
      • test title index
      • author index
      • foreign language availability index
      • publisher index
      • tests for special populations (hearing-, visually- , or physically-impaired)
      • out of print index
  • Test Critiques (BF176 .T419)
    • This is a companion to Tests, and contains supplemental info
    • Includes mostly tests for psychology, education and business
    • Each test is described with 3 parts:
      • Introduction: Describes tests in detail
      • Practical Applications/Uses: Provides info on intended population, scoring, administration, interpretation
      • Technical Aspects and Critiques: Citations on reliability studies, expert opinions on the test

   

Possible Subject Headings:

Subject Subheading Possibilities

(Add these to subject subheadings, i.e. psychological tests - handbooks, manuals, etc. or sex (psychology) - testing, or psychological tests -- periodicals)

• Consider doing a Keyword search for a specific test, for example, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
• Consider doing a Keyword search on a topic plus words such as: assessment, instrument, measurement, measures, questionnaires, scales, surveys, testing, tests, for example, eating disorders assessment.

Books that contain actual measurements

Books that describe measurements

Books that discuss measurement methods