City University of Seattle Library: Counseling & Psychology: Find Testing and Assessment Information

Find Testing and Assessment Information

What Types of Tests are Available?

Published tests are available from test publishers. Publishers control the distribution of tests to prevent public familiarity with test content and to ensure tests are administered and scored by qualified examiners. Only a few sources provide an actual test. Some sources will give basic details and a short summary about a testing instrument. Other resources provide an overview or review of a test.

* Test and assessments (and kits that include them) cannot be requested through interlibrary loan.

Unpublished tests are referred to in articles but are not often available from commercial publishers. PsycTESTS (linked below) provides access to full text or partial full text of some unpublished tests. Occasionally, copies or portions of unpublished tests may be found in journal articles or books.

Help from the American Psychological Association

FAQ: Finding information about psychological tests
Use this online guide from the APA to learn more about locating psychological tests.

Locating Evaluations

Locate evaluations of test instruments

PsycTESTS
- Provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments.
- Includes descriptive information about the test as well as its administration and development history.
- Search by test name or acronym, or by topic area (enter key words, such as “anxiety,” into the search box)
- Optionally, limit your results by Methodology.
Mental Measurements Yearbook
- Search for information about specific tests: In the Mental Measurements Yearbook you can search by test name or acronym to find information about specific tests.
- Search for information about areas of testing:You can find information about tests for particular areas by entering key words, such as “anxiety,” into the search box.
PsycINFO
You can find research journal articles that describe experiments and the instruments used to measure their variables in PsycINFO.

Search for information about specific tests:
- Go to “Advanced Search” and enter the name of the test.
- Use the drop-down menu, located next to the search box, and select TM Tests & Measures OR scroll down to the Test and Measures search bar and utilize the features there.
- If you do not find articles using this method, try your search using one of the following from the drop-down menu: SU Subjects, KW Keywords, or TI Title.
Search for information about areas of testing: If you are looking for a type of test, you can combine key words (e.g. cognitive ability, optimism, etc.) with classification codes (e.g. Sensory & Motor Testing; Personality Scales & Inventories) to find out which tests have been used in past research.
- Go to “Advanced Search” and scroll down to the section called “Classification Codes.”
- Select the classification(s) you want.
- Enter your search terms in the box at the top of the screen.
- Optionally, limit your results by Methodology.

Library Homepage Search

Search subject terms to find articles, books and e-books:

psychometrics
personality tests
intelligence tests
psychological testing

Finding Reliability & Validity Data for Tests

Finding Reliability & Validity Data

PsycTESTS and Mental Measurements databases provide reliability & validity data for individual tests. This data is located in a different place in each database.

Here is an example from

PsycTests This link opens in a new window

In PsycTESTS, the data is contained in the "Abstract/Details" page. Expand the page to "Show More..." You will see sections labeled "Reliability" and "Validity."

Here is an example from

Mental Measurements Yearbook with Tests in Print This link opens in a new window

In Mental Measurements, the data is contained in the review of the test. There may be a section marked "TECHNICAL," which contains reliability & validity data. Or, you may need to scan the full text of the review to find the data.

Finding Copies of Tests

Where Can I Find Copies of Tests?

PsycInfo

PsycInfo allows users to filter for available tests that

have permission to be used in teaching/research
have supplementary material available, such as the test itself

If you would like to see tests that fall into those categories, you can choose the appropriate filters when searching in PsycInfo, or browse the list below:

Browse Tests in PsycInfo
Use this link to browse search results for tests that are permissible to use for educational purposes, and which have supplemental materials available.

Websites

Websites often provide useful links to collections of tests and measures. Be careful in your usage and make sure that tests that you find online are accurate and complete.

PsychWeb Resources
This website contains psychology-related information for students and teachers of psychology including testing and assessment information.
AssessmentPsychology
An online source of information on psychological assessment and testing for mental health practitioners.
International Personality Item Pool
This IPIP website is intended to provide rapid access to measures of individual differences, all in the public domain, to be developed conjointly among scientists worldwide.
Psychology Tools
Psychology Tools is a free to use website dedicated to providing psychology professionals, students, and the general public with transparent access to academically validated psychological assessment tools. These are provided for educational use, not diagnosis.