PsycTESTS

Abstract

Tests and test information are sourced directly from authors, peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, books and handbooks, commercial test publishers, websites, and the Archives of the History of American Psychology Test Collection at the University of Akron in Ohio.

PsycTESTS. 750 First Street Northeast, Washington, DC 20002-4242; http://www.apa.org/pubs/ index.aspx. Institutional subscriptions from assorted vendors, with pricing available on request; individually with a subscription to American Psychological Association's PsycNET.

Purpose and description

PsycTESTS is a relatively new addition to the American Psychological Association (APA) stable of subscription database resources and is a research database focused on psychological assessments. It is intended to supplement PsycINFO, their flagship bibliographic database of psychological literature, but it can be used independently as well. It includes a mix of full-text and abstracted content. If a library has other APA databases, journal abstracts may cross-link to the full-text articles. This is a niche database that has no direct electronic peer or competitor and is intended to fill a gap in resources for available test references.

PsycTESTS has a wide range of included dates, subjects, and sources. Its earliest tests were first described in the literature in 1910, but more than half date since 2000, and it is updated monthly with new records and data. Its measures address development, identity, physical health, personality, neuropsychological issues, aptitude, competency, intelligence, resilience, educational levels, and so on. Tests and test information are sourced directly from authors, peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, books and handbooks, commercial test publishers, websites, and the Archives of the History of American Psychology Test Collection at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Content and audience

This database provides ''scholarly, published accounts of test development or assessment'' [1]. While it includes many records for commercially published tests, its focus is on unpublished tests, defined as those only referred to in journal articles, books, or gray literature. This information is of great interest to researchers and students in such areas as psychology, psychiatry, counseling, social work, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, education, and other related fields, but is frequently difficult to find.

Each test record includes APAadded descriptive metadata, a summary description and history, and all available reliability and validity data. Most records for noncommercial tests also include the actual test instrument and an assortment of linked records, such as relevant dissertations, technical reports, published reviews, related peer-reviewed literature, and so on. Most content is available in portable document format (PDF), with the exceptions of some tests that include multimedia or software content. APA has also included a record field for ''permissions,'' which explicitly marks each test as being freely available for reuse (most) or requiring author permission. As it is common for graduate students and other researchers to wish to use noncommercial tests in their research, this is likely to be well appreciated by users.

Usability and platforms

PsycTESTS is available from APA, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Ovid. As it is highly likely than any new subscriber would already have a subscription to PyscINFO and other APA databases, the database will be most usable for a particular library on whichever platform provides those databases. Based on the assumption that other APA databases are already subscribed to, most users new to it will find it familiar and simple to use. The reviewer used it on both EBSCO and Ovid's platforms and found that both provide clear, obvious search limiters that are specific to PsycTESTS, as well as their usual absorption of database-specific vocabulary into their own proprietary structures, allowing a user to search by such important fields as permissions, formats, test availability, age, test acronym, test reliability, and so on. Each of the four platforms provides the option for a user to search all subscribed APA or other databases together, making it more likely that a user will find full text or other additional relevant records.

APA, Proquest, EBSCO, and Ovid all provide the option to subscribe to the other APA databases, but have major differences in which additional content may be subscribed to. APA offers its own databases alone, which will be sufficient for some psychological researchers, but leaves out some resources long used for test research that are available elsewhere. EBSCO, Ovid, and Proquest each offer a range of other full text and bibliographic general and psychological databases as well that can be searched with the APA databases.

If a researcher is interested in commercially published assessments, as many are, it is critical to have certain test reference resources available, to which PsycTESTS makes an excellent addition. Locating PsycTESTS on the same platform as these other test resources makes it most useful. Both EBSCO and Ovid (but not APA or ProQuest) offer the option to subscribe to and include Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) with Tests in Print (TIP), each of which is a well-known source of commercial test reviews with a long print history. Both also offer the option to subscribe to the Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) database, which includes information about a mix of psychological and nonpsychological tests relevant to a broader range of health sciences researchers. Each of these resources is unique, as is PsycTESTS, and none can be substituted for another. Libraries subscribing to both MMY/TIP and HAPI, or MMY/TIP alone, will want to add PsycTESTS to their online collections and locate it on the platform that will allow concerted searching of all test resources together.

References

Reference

1. American Psychological Association. Frequently asked questions about Psyc-TESTS [Internet]. Washington (DC): The Association; 2011 [cited 22 Feb 2013]. ,http://www.apa.org/pubs/ databases/psyctests/faq.aspx..

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.101.3.021