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Psychology

Research resources on psychology, including databases, handbooks, and guides to literature reviews, measures and research methods.

About Tests and Measures

Tests, measures, questionnaires, inventories, instruments, scales, surveys...important tools, but sometimes elusive. They are most likely to be found:

  • in a journal article
  • in a book
  • in a dissertation
  • on the website of a research institute, academic department, etc.
  • from a commercial vendor

Finding Tests

Alcohol and substance abuse

Clinical psychology

Communication

Education

Personality and identity

Violence

Often a test or measure used for dissertation research is reproduced in the dissertation, if it is not a commercial test.

The websites of research centers or academic departments may distribute tests. Generally these will come up with a Google search by test name, but the following is a list of sites with collections of tests.

Unfortunately, some tests are sold by commercial vendors that place severe restrictions on their use. These are almost impossible to obtain by interlibrary loan because they are generally not sold to libraries, and often quite expensive. If the test you are seeking falls into this category, you will have the most success searching the other resources listed on this page for similar tests.

How to tell if it is a commercial test?

Often, if you Google the title of a commercial test, you will find the website of the vendor that sells it. Alternatively, you may search:

Citing measurement instruments in APA

From a website

Bavolek, S. J. (1983). Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory [Measurement instrument]. Unpublished instrument. http://chipts.ucla.edu/resources/?did=159.

From a book

Owens, J.A., Spirito, A., McGuinn, M., & Mobile, C. (2011). Teacher’s Daytime Sleepiness Questionnaire [Measurement instrument].  In A. Shahid, K. Wilkinson, S. Marcu & C. M. Shapiro (Eds.) (2012). STOP, THAT and one hundred other sleep scales (pp. 387-388). doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-9893-4

From PsycTests

Armfield, J. M. (2007). Fear of Animals Questionnaire [Database record]. Retrieved from PsycTESTS. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/t12284-000