"Research Instruments are measurement tools (for example, questionnaires or scales) designed to obtain data on a topic of interest from research subjects. Research instrument records are researched and created by database staff, and these provide information about the research instrument, including information such as the purpose of the instrument, the population addressed, the variables measured, and more."
Research Instrument records "indicate which studies have used a specific research instrument and may include the purpose/variable measured, sample population, methodology, other instruments, items, and questions, where the original study was mentioned, and how to obtain the actual research instrument."
Finding research instruments can be time-consuming. There are several possible places where you might find them. Some instruments may be freely available on the web. Others may be found in journal articles or dissertations (often as an appendix), which may or may not be available in the Library. Some are only available from the creator(s) of the research instrument. Some tests may only be purchased and/or restricted to qualified persons. As well as finding the instrument to use in your research, you also need to obtain permission in writing from the copyright holder.
For most databases, you can find articles describing and sometimes containing scales, questionnaires, surveys, and other research instruments with the following type of search strategy:
AND
Where the asterisk (*) is a truncation symbol. For example, measure* will search measure, measures, measuring, and measurement(s) all at once.
SU stands for Subject headings and TI stands for Title. This is considered Field searching, where you search specific fields for your keywords rather than the full text. So we want these particular words in only the subject terms field and the title field.
Below are other ways to find research instruments in specific databases:
