Searching electronic databases to locate tests and measures

Requests for tests and measuring instruments for use in class assignments and faculty and student research are both familiar and frustrating to most academic librarians. In typical scenarios, an education student wants to measure aggression in children or a nursing student needs a test for patient mobility. Even the faculty member who may know the name of a scale may not know its author or how to obtain a copy. All are looking for a measure applicable to a specific situation and each has come to the library in hopes of walking away with a copy of the measure that day. Those familiar with measurement literature know that accessing measures can be time consuming, circuitous, and sometimes impossible. The standard test reference books, such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook and Tests in Print (both of which are published by the Buros Institute, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska), are of limited use. These books typically do not include actual instruments or noncommercial tests from the journal and report literature. While these standard reference books are essential to a test literature collection, sole use of them would mean bypassing large numbers of instruments developed and published only in articles, reports, papers, and dissertations. Sources are available to locate additional measurements, tests, and instruments, but they are widely dispersed in the print and electronic literature.