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Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences: Tests and Measurements

Tests and Measurements

Psychological tests and measurements are tools which can be used by psychologists to help assess their patients for various conditions, and by researchers for data collection or research purposes

These tabs provide a list of resources to help you:

  • find a review of a specific test to decide if it is valid or appropriate
  • locate a full text copy of a specific test
  • identify appropriate tests that are available on a topic or variable
  • find additional online test resources, including a list of free and proprietary tests
  • access virtual desktop applications
  • share a link to a test.

Title: Finding Tests in APA PsycTests: Using the Ovid Platform

Running Time: 5:22 mins

Further information relating to the appropriate use of psychological tests is available on the American Psychological Association's Testing and Assessment web page and in the Australian Psychological Society's Position Statement on Psychological tests and testing.

Check whether the test you selected is valid and appropriate.

Locate critical reviews of individual tests in the following sources:

  • Mental Measurements Yearbook and Tests in Print - provides full text edited reviews that have been written by content area experts. Reviews include information about validity, reliability, test administration, test materials, scoring and reporting, etc.

Print copies of the Mental Measurements Yearbook are also available from 1st edition (1938) to 19th edition (2014) in our Offsite storage facility.

  • Test Reviews Online - allows you to search for citations to reviews that have been included in the Mental Measurements Yearbook series (above). Full text is not freely available from Test Reviews Online

Additional test reviews can be located in journal articles

When you are searching for reviews, include the name of the test and relevant search terms such as "validity", "validation", "reliability", or "reviews". You can also consider searching databases using subject headings to increase the precision of your search.

Key library databases to search include:

Use the following sources to find a copy of a specific test

Tests on the internet:

Tests can often be found on websites. Search using Google, or follow some of the suggested links on the "Additional online test resources" tab

Browse Library resources:

The appendices of articles or theses will sometimes include the full text of instruments. Use relevant keywords AND "append*" when searching the following databases:

Requesting permission to use a test:

You are usually required to contact authors or individuals for permission to use their test. The blog site by Jane Friedman provides sample permissions letters students can customize for this purpose.

Psychological Tests Inventory:

The Monash School of Psychological Sciences does have an inventory of tests. Direct any inquiries to testloan.psych@monash.edu

Purchase a test

If you cannot find a free copy of a test, you can search the following sources to find out how to purchase a copy of the test. Most of these sources will list the publisher, cost and availability details for specific tests. Publishers usually hold the copyright to tests, and some purchasing restrictions may apply to ensure purchasers are qualified to administer and interpret the tests.

Use the following sources to identify any tests that are available to measure a particular variable, such as a cognitive skill or personality trait:

Tip: If the database does not have special search fields to assist in finding studies you can search by keyword and enter additional terms such as "test", "questionnaire", "assessment", "measurement"  etc to refine your search.

There are a variety of freely available online resources which can be used to develop and conduct your experiments.

Some of the Open Source or Proprietary Software and included Web guides and Platforms are listed below.

Overview and comparisons of available tools:

Free software for Monash students and researchers:

Note: Free tools and applications to collect and analyse data are available from the Psychology Research Portal, via the Virtual Lab (vLab). These include:

Installed tools:

  • Experiment generation software: Inquisit, Open Sesame
  • Data analysis software: SPSS Statistics, NVivo, MATLAB, and R.

Web-based tools:

  • Survey generation software: Qualtrics
  • Participant acquisition tools are crowdsourcing services: Sona Systems and TurkPrime

Study generators and editors: Free/Open source software

Study generators and editors: Proprietary software

Links to online experiments:

(note: sites can include either surveys and/or online experiments)

Recommended reading:

Occupational Therapy Assessment Tools are held in the closed reserve collection in Peninsula campus library and are available for students to use for 3 hours in the library.  Staff may borrow these tools for negotiable periods of time.  

The closed reserve collection is located on the ground floor of the Peninsula campus library.  Ask at the Information Point with the details of the assessment tool you wish to use. 

For a comprehensive printable PDF list of occupational therapy assessment tools available at the Peninsula Library click on the link below: