Counseling and Human Services  Tags: socialsciences education  

This tab shows you how to find information about tests and how to find the tests themselves. The majority of commercially available instruments must be purchased from publishers. Tests that are not commercially available may be found in books, journal articles, printed reports, or from the author. Finding scales and measures often requires thorough searching of print and electronic library resources.

While many scholarly articles describe studies conducted with psychological tests, they do not usually include the test itself. But you can still find a lot of information about the tests in this literature.

Covers 1985-present. Contains articles describing questionnaires, rating scales, index measures, scenarios, vignettes, observations, checklists, manuals, etc. Under 'Limit to,' select Primary Source or Secondary Source. Primary Source means the citation is the original source for the instrument. Secondary Source means the instrument was originally developed by another author or for another study. Use reliability and validity as keywords to locate instruments with tested psychometric properties.

Covers 1887-present. This database covers mainly journal articles (includes some books and other material) relevant to psychology, education, medicine, business, sociology, and psychiatry. Start with a keyword search to find articles relating to a type of inventory and then combine it with a keyword search using the word appended. This will find instruments relating to a specific subject that are included in the article appendix.

Covers 1966-present. Contains citations from a broad array of biomedical journals. Useful MeSH (medical subject headings) include questionnaires, psychological tests, health status rating scales, psychiatric status rating scales, and personality inventory.
In PubMed, not all instruments fall under MeSH headings, so try a keyword search such as pregnancy AND questionnaire. Other keywords to consider include inventories, scale measure, measurements, survey, and psychometrics.

Covers 1982-present. CINAHL covers nursing, allied health, biomedicine, and consumer health journals. Any article reporting a research study that uses an instrument has the name of the instrument recorded in the Instrumentation field. In the search box, enter the instrument name and select IN Instrumentation from the drop-down box.

Covers 1976-present. ERIC focuses on the U.S. education literature. Phrases to use in your search include: screening tests, diagnostic tests, disability identification, ability identification, and talent identification.