Psychological & Brain Sciences

You know your research question, you have the shape of your experiment mapped out, and now you need a test.  You could create one from scratch but there's a niggling belief that it already exists and you just have to find it.  Surely that's easier, faster, and has a greater depth of experimental validation than creating your own, right?

Many reserchers are in this position at one or more points in their career. The APA Science Directorate even has an FAQ about finding instruments (linked below).  Consult the Directorate's advice, explore these resources available to you at UMass, and don't hesitate to reach out to Melanie Radik for assistance.   

PsycTests, from the American Psychological Association, is an index of the tests described in research articles that are included in the database PsycInfo.  If a researcher mentioned a test, instrument, or assessment they used in the course of their research, a record is created for PsycTests.  A PsycTests record captures information on what the test measured and the citation information of the article in which it was described.

Just because a record in PsycTests exists does not mean that a full text of the instrument is available.  Check the original article for appendices, supplemental data, a figure in the body of the article, or written description of the test in the methods or other text of the article.  Some researchers may have adapted commercial tests, in which cases they are unable to share due to copyright restrictions.  Other researchers may not have included sufficient details about the test in their published article for it to be reproduced.  In those cases, please reach out to the corresponding author directly for any information they can share.

Created by the Buros Center for Testing, this database combines candid reviews and ratings of the thousands of commercial tests described in the Mental Measurements Yearbook written by experts in the field, with the detailed information from Tests in Print on what a test does, how, and where it can be acquired.  Not all tests included in Tests in Print will have an associated review from the Mental Measurements Yearbook, but this database gets you all of the information available in one place.  Access at UMass is provided on the EBSCO platform.

From the Publisher:
Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) is the "Consumer Reports" of the testing industry.  Typical MMY test entries include descriptive information, two professional reviews, and reviewer references. To be reviewed in the MMY a test must be commercially available, be published in the English language, and be new, revised, or widely used since it last appeared in the MMY series. Beginning in The Fourteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook, tests also must include sufficient documentation supporting their technical quality to meet criteria for review.

Tests in Print (TIP) serves as a comprehensive bibliography to commercially available tests that are currently in print in the English language. Now in its Tenth Edition, TIP provides vital information about tests to test users including test purpose, intended test population, administration times, scores generated, price, test publisher, in-print status, test acronym, publication date(s), and test author(s). A score index permits users to identify what is measured by each test.

User guides from the Buros Center for Testing:

For further clinical evaluation and research, the APA is offering a number of “emerging measures” in Section III of DSM-5-TR. These patient assessment measures were developed to be administered at the initial patient interview and to monitor treatment progress, thus serving to advance the use of initial symptomatic status and patient reported outcome (PRO) information, as well as the use of “anchored” severity assessment instruments. Instructions, scoring information, and interpretation guidelines are included. Clinicians and researchers may provide APA with further data on the instruments’ usefulness in characterizing patient status and improving patient care.