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Tests and Measurement Instruments: Finding Instruments in Articles

Guide to finding measurement instruments. Designed for Social Work students but applicable to Psychology, Social Sciences and helping professions.

Tutorials

Appended Instruments

Databases that might include appended test instruments.

How do I get the actual instrument?

Unpublished Tests

Some test instruments are included in the books, journal articles or online rather than published on their own. Unless otherwise noted, all test instruments are copyrighted and permission should be sought from the copyright-holder (usually the person who developed the test) before they are used.

Locating unpublished tests

  • Try looking for tests appended to articles in databases like PsycINFO or ERIC (for education)
  • Try searching for words like "appended" in abstracts to articles when searching other relevant databases for articles on your test. The idea is to find phrases like "Test included" or "instrument appended to article".
  • Some researchers post their test instruments on personal or departmental web-pages or in their university's institutional repository. Sometimes these can be located through http://scholar.google.com.
  • There are a few websites indexing tests, but the test might be "lifestyle magazine" types of tests and not suitable for academic research. I've listed one site I like below. Please share if you know of others.

Of course, you can always ask me or one of the other helpful UI librarians.

Finding Instruments in Dissertations

Dan the Librarian

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Dan Gall
Contact:
lib-disted@uiowa.edu
319-335-5256
Subjects: Social Work