Library Guides: Educational and Psychological Instruments: Identifying Instruments for Your Research Project

Contact the librarian at your campus for more help!

University Park / World Campus:
Ellysa Cahoy
(ellysa@psu.edu or 814-865-9696)

Harrisburg / World Campus:
Bernadette Lear
(BAL19@psu.edu or 717-948-6360)

Introduction

There is a difference between finding a few questions quickly for a class assignment, versus identifying the BEST instruments for your thesis, dissertation, or research project. If you are doing deep research to make an impact on your profession, or you are hoping to publish your results, it's important to know which instruments are widely used and have been peer-reviewed by other researchers. Below are some resources.

Exploring Tests That Are Commonly Used and Peer Reviewed

Mental Measurements Yearbook with Tests in Print This link opens in a new window
Provides critical reviews on the construction, use, and validity of commercially available tests published in English.
Mental Measurements Yearbook provides access to full-text reviews of over 3000 testing instruments for psychology, education, business, and leadership. Also included in this database is Tests in Print, a bibliography providing information on accessing known commercially available English-language tests currently in print.

The Twentieth Mental Measurements Yearbook by Buros Center; Janet F. Carlson (Editor); Kurt F. Geisinger (Editor); Jessica L. Jonson (Editor)
ISBN: 9780910674669
Publication Date: 1938-present
The original, printed version of the MMY, which some instructors still use for teaching purposes. If visiting the library isn't convenient for you, you can view a list of all tests profiled in the MMY from 1985 to the present on the Buros Institute Tests Reviewed page. Once you know the name of a desired test, you can purchase a review on the Buros Test Reviews Online site.

Identifying Additional Instruments (if needed)

PsycTESTS (formerly listed as APA PsycTests®) This link opens in a new window
The library's best database for Psychology tests/measures. Includes some Education items as well.
PsycTESTS is a research database that provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration.

Database of Psychological Tests, Instruments, Rating Scales, and Measures
A database of tests published within books, compiled by Mark Stover at California State University, Northridge.
ETS Test Link
ETS, the same company that developed the SAT and the GRE, has one of the largest libraries of testing instruments in the world. Its catalog, TestLink, lists more than 25,000 tests that you can purchase from ETS or obtain elsewhere.

Health & Psychosocial Instruments - HAPI This link opens in a new window
Identifies health-related instruments in journal articles. Though focused on medicine and nursing, some psychological tests are included.
Health and Psychosocial Instruments features material on unpublished information-gathering tools for clinicians that are discussed in journal articles, such as questionnaires, interview schedules, tests, checklists, rating and other scales, coding schemes, and projective techniques. The majority of tools are in medical and nursing areas such pain measurement, quality of life assessment, and drug efficacy evaluation. However, HaPI also includes tests used in medically related disciplines such as psychology, social work, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech & hearing therapy.
ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Contains Education-related articles, dissertations, and other research. To focus on items that may contain instruments, use the "Advanced Search." Under "Document Type," choose "160: Tests/Questionnaires."
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.
Catalog (Penn State University Libraries catalog) This link opens in a new window
To find books on testing, add words such as "assessment," "instruments," "measurement," "research," "scaling," or "testing" to your search.
This is the online catalog of materials owned by Penn State Libraries. All formats (books, journals, audiovisuals, maps, recordings, etc.) are included. Circulation status for individual items is also provided. Coverage: Presently contains about 7 million records. Updates: Continuous up-to-the-minute as new records are added.

Google Book Search
Searches the full-text of millions of books.

Search Tips

Finding the best instruments for your project can be challenging. As you work through the steps above, here are some general tips:

“Truncate” (*) your keyword searches so that library databases will search for all forms of the root word
- For instance, assess* will find books and articles that have “assessment” or “assessing” in the title
Try related and broader words, especially if you are finding too few results
- For instance, if you’d like to measure problem-solving ability in 16 to 21-year olds, try both "adolescents," "high school," and related words. Also, you can try "intelligence" (a broader term) instead of “problem-solving ability”
Carefully note every clue you find regarding your instruments, their authors, and their publishers, including:
- Abbreviations, popular names, and “official” or spelled-out names of your instruments
- Names of all authors who were involved in the development of the instruments
- Corporations that published the instruments, or universities where the instruments' authors work
- Alternative versions and new editions of the instruments
On the internet, many free versions of tests are edited or shortened -- they are not the complete, original instruments that you are expected to use. Be cautious about using them