LibGuides: Finding Measurement Tools: Home

Introduction

What are measurement tools?
Measurement tools are instruments like surveys, questionnaires, or scales to help collect data from a population—whether patients, students, clients, or subjects. They help quantify variables that are not normally quantifiable with technology and equipment. For example, we can draw blood and run a lipid panel to measure cholesterol levels. However, concepts like anxiety or pain or satisfaction cannot be measured by any equipment or technology so we must rely on measurement tools.

Do note that many measurement tools are protected by copyright. If planning to use a tool for research or practice, you may need to get copyright permission or pay for a license. Talk to your librarian for further information.

Terms to know:

Reliability: The extent to which a measurement is free from error. The result for a person who has not changed also doesn’t change when retested at different intervals, by different people, or in different situations.
Validity: the degree to which an instrument is measuring the thing it claims to measure. For example, does a test for student engagement actually measure that, or is it measuring something else, like extroversion or intelligence?

Measurement Tools: Health and Psychosocial Instruments / Mental Measurements Yearbook

Health and Psychosocial Instruments This link opens in a new window
Provides questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, coding schemes, rating scales in the fields of health and psychosocial sciences. 1 simultaneous user access model.
Mental Measurements Yearbook This link opens in a new window
Testing instruments, with information for evaluation of test products in diverse areas such as psychology, education, business, and leadership. 8 simultaneous user access model.

Instructions: Health and Psychosocial Instruments / Mental Measurements Yearbook

Health and Psychosocial Instruments

Mental Measurements Yearbook

Contains records and reviews of thousands of measurement tools used in disciplines like psychology, education, and business. The tools found in this database are commercially available products and usually require purchase from a publisher.

Searching Other Databases

What is MeSH?

There are many other ways and places to find measurement tools. One good option is using keyword searching in subject databases. Simply do a keyword search as you would normally, but add terms that indicate you are searching for a measurement tool, such as the following:

Examples:

"test anxiety" AND ("oral interview" OR questionnaire)
"website usability" AND (validity OR reliability) AND (test OR survey OR instrument OR measurement)

Further Databases for Finding Measurement Tools

APA PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
Peer-reviewed articles published by the American Psychological Association and affiliated journals.
APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Index of peer-reviewed literature in behavioral sciences and mental health.
CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
Current Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), with full text for many of the most used journals.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
Education Resource Information Center (ERIC). Education-related literature, resources, and media.
Also available at eric.ed.gov

ETS Test Collection
Database of thousands of measurement tools primarily focused on education but encompassing multiple disciplines; includes tests from countries other than the US.

PubMed This link opens in a new window
Citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. May link to selected full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

RAND Health
RAND, a non-profit research organization that works to improve health around the world, makes their measurement tools available without charge.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
**SUBSCRIPTION TO SCOPUS HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED, EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2024. PLEASE SEE WEB OF SCIENCE AS AN ALTERNATIVE.**

Abstracts and citations for academic, peer-reviewed journal articles in technical, medical, sciences, and social sciences.

Substance Use Screening & Assessment Instruments Database
Smaller collection of measurement tools used by researchers and care providers in the area of substance abuse prevention and treatment.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
All Web of Science databases. Indexes multidisciplinary scholarly and peer-reviewed resources.

Finding Measurement Tools: Home