APA's PsycTESTS database is the easiest way to identify and access the full text of instruments. If you DO NOT find what you need there, try some of the resources and strategies described in the other boxes below.
Thousands of test instruments (including aptitude tests, personality scales and cognitive functioning measures, surveys and other assessments), as well as descriptive information about tests that were developed for research but not made commercially available (i.e. unpublished tests). Most of the tests have links to published documents, primarily peer-reviewed journal articles that include further information about the development of the test. APA has gathered these tests from a variety of sources: directly from authors who wish others to use their tests in research; peer reviewed journals for which APA has rights or permission to use; books, dissertations, and websites.
More than 70% of entries contain the actual test. Pay attention to the PERMISSIONS field to see how the test can be used.
Produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). Coverage: 1910-present.Commercial/Published Tests are available directly from a commercial test publisher for a fee and typically are acccessible only to qualified/certified professionals. You will seldom, if ever, find the items from these instruments in the public domain. See the tab labeled Commercial/Published Tests for details on how to identify and locate commercial tests and measures.
CINAHL Ultimate indexes nursing and allied health professions literature. In it, you may find articles describing the use of a test instrument as well as occasionally the test instrument itself.
Steps and Tips for Searching
The Instrumentation (IN) field in a record includes the names of instruments used in the research study.
To search for articles that used a specific instrument...
To search for an appended instrument,
ERIC (Proquest) (Educational Resources Information Center) includes scholarly articles, reports, curriculum and teaching guides and conference papers covering multiple levels of education from preK to higher education.
Steps and Tips for Searching​
PsycINFO the database to search for psychology related articles.
Note that under the SEARCH OPTIONS section there is a "Tests & Measures" search box that also allows you to search for words in titles of tests.
PubMed indexes biomedical articles.
MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) headings for the concept of tests and measurement include: questionnaires, psychological tests, psychometrics outcome, and process assessment (health care). Locating an instrument or test in Pubmed may also be done using important words from the title of a particular instrument.
Google Scholar (be sure to use this link or the UNM Library's Google Scholar link in order to easily connect to UNM resources you find in Google Scholar).
Google Scholar is often a good tool to use to search for a known item, such as a test or measure.