Existing Measures

“Measures” is the terminology encompassing any type of measurement tool, such as scales, questionnaires, inventory, test, etc.

There are two types of measures -- “Published Measures” is the terminology given to any type of measure that is commercially available for purchase, such as from publishing companies whose purpose is to collect and sell measures and reviews of those measures (e.g., statistical reviews and theoretical critiques). Some of the “Published Measures” originated in academic journals and books, but then migrated to the commercial publishing companies with updated and revised additions of the measures. The other type of measures are called “Unpublished Measures”, which contrary to the name, have been published in academic articles, dissertations, books, and other scholarly works, but have not been made available for sale by the commercial publishers.

I will first describe how to find published measures, and then how to find unpublished measures.

However, your first step should be to define your topic(s) of interest because for all sources of measures discussed below, you will need to search by using keywords. In other words, your topic needs to be: (a) concretely well-defined, and (b) comprehensively well-defined.

For example, if you were interested in a measure of anger, searching for other theoretically-related words might produce relevant measures, such as hostility and frustration which are shown in the literature to be theoretically relevant to anger. If you are not familiar with the literature on your topic of interest, try asking a colleague for theoretically relevant concepts, or read a literature review on the topic. Also, if you are contacting a colleague who conducts research on the topic, ask for the measures they use when measuring the topic.

Another way to find related words is using synonyms, which for anger could be rage, fury, wrath, resentment, indignation, annoyance, hatred, indignation, etc. An online thesaurus, or Googling the word, will provide ample examples. There is also an APA book called “Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms ( which contains standardized vocabulary terms used in database searches such as PsycINFO. By standardizing the words or phrases used to represent concepts, you don't need to try and figure out all the ways different authors could refer to the same concept.

Another way to find the right measure is by breaking-up your topic into distinct components, which can be separately well-defined and used for searching by keywords. For example, searching for anger could be divided into searching for state and trait anger, direct and indirect anger, and etc.

Finally, you may also want to have well-defined keywords that start at a narrow level of specificity and thencycle toward broader and broader concepts. For example, if the specific topic of your research is how displaced anger influences health outcomes in terms of cardiovascular functioning, then your first narrow search could be for “displaced anger cardiovascular”, and then some combination such as “displaced anger”, “anger cardiovascular”, and so forth. Then, a broader search could be for health instead of cardiovascular function, or anger instead of displaced anger, and so forth.

1.Test Banks for “Published Measures”

There are many publishers who provide searchable databases for commercially available measures. The five most popular are Mental Measurement Yearbook, Tests in Print, Test Critiques, Tests, and ETS. Each serves a different function. For example…

“Mental Measurements Yearbook” (MMY)provides detailed information about each measure including psychometric reliability, validity, normative data, intended population, scoring, and reviews of the measures. Each version of the MMY includes only the measures that are new or revised since the last published version of the MMY. The purpose of the MMY is to have a thorough description of each measure.
“Tests in Print” (TIP) is the summary description of everything in the MMY. The entries in the TIP do not contain the detailed information from the MMY, but instead the purpose of the TIP is to provide quick and easy access to the entire list of measures in all the versions of the MMY.

For an online searchable database of the TIP, see

“Test Critiques” is similar to the MMY in that is contains detailed information such as psychometric reliability, validity, normative data, intended population, scoring, and reviews of the measures.
“Tests” is a concise listing of measures in Test Critiques similar to how the TIP is a concise listing of the measures from the MMY.

There is no online searchable database for Tests, but any library will have the hardcopy.

ETS is a “testing company” which creates and administers nationwide standardized tests such as the GRE and SAT. One component of the company is a library of standardized tests and research instruments.

For an online searchable database of the ETS library, see

To learn more about “Published Measures”, see the following APA website -

2.Databases for finding “Unpublished Measures”

There are many different databases of scholarly works that covers different overlapping academic fields (such as psychology, education, sociology, etc), such as PsycINFO, OVID, Medline, Eric, Web of Knowledge, and etc. The two most relevant to finding Psychology-related measures are PsycINFO and OVID.

PsycINFO is non-full-text database of the psychological literature from the 1800s to the present with over 2.4 million sources as of August 2007, and more than 161,000 sources added every year. To learn more about the coverage of PsycINFO, see the following website -

You can search PsycINFO by dozen of different “fields” such as title, abstract, author, source, publication year, keywords, classification codes, and etc. For a listing and description of the different fields, see

I would recommend starting your search for measures by restricting your PsycINFO search to the title, such as anger, displaced anger, state anger, and etc in the title because this is the most likely way you will find the most likely relevant measures for your topic.

FYI – when a researcher creates a new measure, they typically publish an article testing the psychometric properties of the scale, such as the reliability and validity of the measure. The titles of those articles are invariably the title of the measure and/or the relevant variables tested by the measure. Thus, using a “title” search is an efficient way to identify the most relevant measures for your topic of interest. Plus, those articles testing the psychometric properties of the measure usually contain the actual items used in the measure, so finding those types of articles is the quickest way to find the actual wording of the measures.

I would then recommend restricting your search to the abstract because, aside from the title, the abstract is the second most likely place to find the exact wording or keywords that define your topic of interest.

I would also recommend conducting a “classification code” search. Classification codes are the keywords used by the employees at PsycINFO to categorize the sources according to different disciplines (such as Clinical, Social, Law/Psychology), and sub-disciplines (within Law/Psychology is civil law, criminal law, crime, police, and etc.). You can find a complete list of codes here -

OVIDis a collection of databases across many different social science fields. One of the databases is called “Health and Psychosocial Instruments” (HAPI) which covers 1985 to the present.

The HAPI database contains only sources that pertain to measures. So, unlike PsycINFO which contains over 2 million sources that includes some that pertain to measures and some that do not, everything in the HAPI database is relevant to measures in some way; either the primary source (containing the measure) or a secondary source (describing the measure such as in a book or literature review).

The HAPI database contains the listing of the source, not the actual full-text source. Thus, the HAPI database is similar to PsycINFO in this regard, in that you can find the source using the database, but then you have to locate the actual source (hardcopy or PDF) through another venue.

The HAPI database includes information not provided in PsycINFO such as the number of questions in the scale, psychometric information if available, and descriptors to help you find related measures.

The HAPI database contains all types of measures. For example, if a researcher publishes an article testing the psychometric properties of a measure, it will be in the HAPI database. However, many times a researcher will create a new measure but not test the psychometric properties of the measures. For example, researchers typically like to investigate new and original topics, so researchers will create questionsthat pertain to their individual studies. The employees at HAPI scan articles looking for measures, and will include that article into the HAPI database, sometimes giving a title/name to the measure even though the psychometric properties have not been investigated. The advantage of including those measures into the database is that you can find a larger assortment of potentially relevant measures.

The HAPI database is not comprehensive or thorough. A quick search of both PsycINFO and HAPI shows that there are many measures in one that are not in the other, and vice versa.

You can search HAPI by fields such as keyword, author, and title. I would recommend starting with a title search, then a keyword search.

3.Secondary Sources for “Unpublished Measures”

There are many books devoted to assembling measures on a given topic, and providing critiques or reviews of the measures. There are also sometimes literature reviews that concentrate on assembling and critiquing measures on a given topic. The topics may range from very narrow (such as measures of marriages or crime or coping or etc) to very broad (such as social/personality measures or clinical or religion or etc).

To find the literature reviews, search PsycINFO.

To find the books, search PsycINFO, your university library, or ask your university librarian.

Note that each book may provide varying levels of detail about the measures, so some books will only list the source for the measure, while others may devote an entire chapter to critiquing an individual measure.

Below I have listed some of the more comprehensive books that assemble and critique measures.

Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes. Edited by Robinson, John P. San Diego, CA., Academic Press, 1991.
Communication research measures: A sourcebook. Edited by Rebecca B. Rubin, Philip Palmgreen, Howard E. Sypher
Directory of Unpublished Experimental Mental Measures, by APA
Measures for Psychological Assessment: A Guide to 3,000 Original Sources and Their Applications. Edited by Chun, Cobb, & French. Most current volume: 1975.

4.Google for both “Published Measures” and “Unpublished Measures”

Google =

Google Scholar =

Sometimes the best place to start your search is by using Google to search for the specific keywords of your topic. Google Scholar is another potential source of information. Google Scholar is a freely-accessible web search engine that indexes the full-text of scholarly literature (including theses, books, abstracts and articles) across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Google is also a good place to end your search. For example, after finding a measure using the Test Banks, Databases, or Secondary Sources, you can use Google to find if the actual text of the measure is posted online. Thus, you don’t have to hunt through your library for the source article that contains the text of the measure; instead you can download the measure and/or copy/paste the measure from an online source. The author of the measure may also have a website that contains more information about the measure beyond that contained in the source article. For example, the author may have revised the measure since the publication of the measure, or the author may post relevant research articles that uses the measures, or the author may have listings of other relevant measures used in his/her research, or… etc. The only way to know what you may find is by Googling it.

5.Invisible college for both “Published Measures” and “Unpublished Measures”

The invisible college is another place to both start and end your search. The invisible college is the network of researchers and practioners who are connected by word-of-mouth, listservs, forums, mailing lists, message boards, and etc. The invisible college is about connecting those people with questions to those people with answers. Sometimes the easiest way to find a pertinent measure is to ask a researcher who conducts that type of research; and sometimes the easiest way to find those researchers is by sending an email to the appropriate listserv asking for feedback. You will be surprised at how quickly you get responses and how detailed the responses are to your inquiry. You can then repay the favor by posting a summary of the responses back to the listserv where others can benefit from the collective knowledge. Plus, many listservs maintain online archives so that people who join the listserv at a later time can also benefit from the collective effort of the field. In fact, you may want to also scan the relevant archives because someone may have already posted a summary about measures pertaining to your topic.