Social Work

READ THIS FIRST...  YES REALLY READ THIS!

Tests and measuring instruments are an important part of research and practice in the social and behavioral sciences.  These psychological and educational tests and measuring instruments are:

(1) either commercially produced and must be purchased through a publisher (often very expensive, sometimes requiring training/certification in administering it at a cost)

(2) or they are published in journal literature but are considered "unpublished" in the sense that you don't have to go through a publisher to get them.

Your BEST BETS listed on this page for full text of tests/measures are: PsycTESTS database, the book Measures for Clinical Practice & Research,  Googling or searching databases relevant to your subject areas for full text of tests/measures, or sometimes even writing the test creator asking permission to use their work for your undergraduate or graduate research.

Searching Social Work, Sociology, Psychology, Education, and other databases for journal articles containing tests/measures is also recommended.

View this tutorial explaining how to filter instruments by type when searching APA PsycTESTS

In APA PsycINFO use the Tests and Measures field to find measures used in a study and sometimes the actual measure.

• Select advanced search to get multiple search boxes
• Enter the name of the measure, or keyword/concept, e.g., Beck Depression Scale; resilience. Leave this drop-down as is "all fields"
• Adjacent to the next search box select Tests & Measures from the drop-down menu on the right, and click the Select button.
• Adding the word appended to this search box will bring results in the Tests & Measures field that are included in the source. (Note, however, that what is appended may not be the exact test or concept measure you were seeking.  This search looks for whatever is listed in the field.)
• For example, anxiety and appended.

For another search strategy useful in other relevant library databases (and for a broader search in APA PsycINFO) try the following :

• Select advanced search to get multiple search boxes
• Type the keywords related to the concepts in your study in the first search box.  Leave drop down alone; do not select a field.
• Type in the second box any combination of the following terms and select Abstract or Author-Supplied Abstract in the drop down menu.

 test* or measure* or survey* or questionnaire* or scale* or checklist* or instrument* or pretest* or posttest* or assessment or interview or inventor* or rating or tool

• One could also leave this second drop down field alone (do not select a field) and see what wider results are found.