Finding Tests & Measurement Instruments

If you are looking for a specific test and have some idea of the name of the test, here are some ways to search for the test:

• Check for the test in APA PsycTests, a database that describes and provides access to a great variety of psychological tests. 
   
• Check for the test in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
   
• Check for test in PsycINFO a psychology database. 
   
• ERIC an education database.
   
• Consult ETS Test Link Database listing more than 25,000 tests and measurement instruments on a wide variety of topics.
   
• Consult Health and Psychosocial Instruments. 
   
• Try Google. 

If you are searching for a manual or scoring information or some other part of a test, follow the steps listed to above but note any entries that look promising to see if there is any mention of the part of the test that interests you. Mental Measurements Yearbook, for instance, will include information in the price field on the price of the individual pieces of the test including the manual. ETS has a "materials notes field" that specifies what parts of the test are available.

There is a useful series of books put out by Wiley whose titles all begin with "Essentials of..." These books have much useful information on scoring, interpreting, and reporting of various tests. You can search for these books by doing a search in Library Catalog Search (or more widely in WorldCat) of Wiley as a publisher and "essentials of" in the title and assessment* OR test* in the subject field. You might also run a search in WorldCat of the title of the test and a relevant keyword such as manual to see if there are any potentially promising entries. Keep in mind, however, that if you find a library that has the test and/or the manual that most libraries will not send their tests to other libraries via interlibrary loan and the use of the their tests at their institution may be restricted. Contact the library ahead of time to see if you will be able to have access to the test or a piece of the test.

Availability of Full Text Tests

Many of the entries contain the full text of the test itself.  For the most part, the full text tests in PsycTest are "unpublished" tests that originally appeared in journal articles and were never released commercially. While the many of the entries in PsycTests include the full text of the test, not all do so. These tests not available directly in the database will include contact information for the author or publisher; you may be able to get a copy from them.

Search Tips

You can search PsycTests by keyword, by test title, or author, among many other options. If you know the name of the test, enter it in the search box with quotes around the name if it is longer than one word. Change the search field to Test Name.

Test Records

After you run a search, click on the title of a test to view the full record:

If the full text is available, you will see a PDF button.

Check the Source Citations for references to the original article that describes the test. Consult this for further narrative description about the test. In some cases, test items may be available in the source that are not reproduced directly in PsycTests.

Be sure to check the Permissions field for information on re-use policies.

More Information

For more information on PsycTests, consult the APA's product site, or watch this video introduction to PsycTests.

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Go to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Put the name of the test in the search box in quotes and include NEAR/3 appendi*. NEAR is a proximity operator which looks for words on either side of the other word and with a specified maximum number of words between them. That number (3 in the example below) can be whatever you choose.

This search will look for any dissertations that have the name of the test within three words of the word appendix or appendices. Often you can go right to the Table of Contents of the dissertation to check and see if the test you want is included in an appendix.

Go to PsycInfo. Enter the name of the test in the search box, putting the title in quotes if you are sure of the name. Change the field to TM Tests & Measures. In the second search box put in the word "appended."

Run your search. Look at the resulting entries carefully since the study might have used more than one test and might not have appended all of them to the article.

See link in the following box if you would like to view a video giving you additional information on searching for tests and measurement instruments in PsycInfo.

Go to ERIC. Choose the Advanced Search. Enter the name of the test in the search box, putting the title in quotes if you are sure of the name. In the next search box put in the number 160 and then change the field to Publication Type. This publication type will look specifically for tests and questionnaires.

Check the search results carefully to make sure that the appended documents include the specific test you want.

According to the ETS website:

ETS Test Link is a database of more than 25,000 tests and other measurement devices, most of which were created by authors outside ETS. It makes information on standardized tests and research instruments available to researchers, graduate students and teachers. With information about tests from the early 1900s to the present, the Test Collection at ETS is the largest compilation of such materials in the world.

The tests in this collection were acquired from a variety of U.S. publishers and individual test authors. Foreign tests are also included in the collection, including some from Canada, Great Britain and Australia.

Please note that many of the tests described in the collection are not freely or easily available! However, 1,260 of them are available through the ETS Tests in Microfiche Collection which the University Library owns in part. Do not purchase a downloadable copy of the test through the ETS website without checking first to see if we own the test on microfiche. If you are interested, however, in searching through the other tests to see if there is additional information on how to access the test you want, please continue reading these instructions.

You will find more detailed instructions on searching this database here. Note that the database uses ERIC subject headings or descriptors to describe the subjects covered in the tests. Please consult with the education subject specialist if you need help in identifying the appropriate subject headings to use in your search.

Once you have found a test that is of interest, check the Availability field for contact information that might be of use in accessing the test. In some cases, the Availability field will cite a publication. There is no guarantee that the publication will include the actual test but it is worth checking to see.

Those tests that are listed in the availability field as being available through the ERIC Document Reproduction Service are either available online full text through the ERIC database or, if not, are available on microfiche in Serials/Microforms on the second floor of the Graduate Library. Let the person there know that you are looking for an ERIC document and specify the ED number for the specific document.

Go to Health and Psychosocial Instruments. Enter the name of the test in the search box and change the Field to TI Title. If you are using an acronym, change the field to AC Acronym.

Once you have run the search, some of the individual result entries will say:

You can obtain the measurement instrument at no charge from Behavioral Measurement Database Services using the listed contact information when you see this note. If there is no such note then use the MGetIt button to navigate to the full text of the article to check and see if the measurement instrument is included. Those entries that are listed as "primary source" are more likely to contain the actual test since primary sources are the original sources where the test was first mentioned.

You can search specifically for primary source documents by including the word primary in the search box and limiting the field to TC Source Code.

To obtain a measurement instrument listed in Health and Psychosocial Instruments that is not included in the article and does not indicate that it is available from Behavioral Measurement Data Services, you could try contacting the author. Otherwise you would follow the steps listed above and below.

Some tests are freely available on the Internet so it's worth a try to look for the test online. Google has a few pointers on how to run an advanced search. You can use those same pointers for a Google Books search. Google Books does a keyword search of all the books that Google has digitized. This collection includes many full text journals as well.