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.
Appended Instruments
Databases that might include appended test instruments.
-
ERIC (EBSCOhost version) This link opens in a new windowThis database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to education-related literature. ERIC provides coverage of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
-
ERIC (ProQuest version) This link opens in a new windowThis database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to education-related literature. ERIC provides coverage of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
-
PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowThe APA PsycINFO database from the American Psychological Association (APA) covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. PsycINFO's peer-reviewed coverage is worldwide, and includes references and abstracts to 2,400 journals in more than 30 languages, and book chapters and books in the English language. Coverage spans 1600s – present and includes over 5 million peer-reviewed records.
-
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (PQDT Global) This link opens in a new windowProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day and offering full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. [Not compatible with Internet Explorer 9]
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Unpublished Tests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Locating unpublished tests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.
-
Psychological Tests for Student UseA limited number of copyrighted tests that are available for student use. No evaluation of the instruments is given. This site is provided as a service by Ron Okada, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto.
-
Finding Test Instruments in ERICFinding surveys, questionnaires and other test instruments in ERIC.
Finding Instruments in Dissertations
-
Instruments in DissertationsFinding Dissertations in Proquest's Dissertations & Theses databases.
