Measurement Instruments for Health Research, Education, and Clinical Practice

This page offers tips for searching literature databases to find instruments.

Currently, there is no way to focus your Ovid MEDLINE/PubMed search to retrieve only those papers that include the actual measurement instrument. To see if an article has the actual measurement instrument included, try searching the full text of the article for the name of the instrument. If the instrument is provided, it will most likely be found in the Appendix or other supplementary material. However, below are some ways to find papers that might have instruments. 

OvidMEDLINE and PubMed have several useful MeSH terms for finding measurement instruments, such as:

If you know the name of the specific instrument, try searching for the instrument name in quotes, e.g., "Beck Depression Inventory", and combine with one or more of the MeSH terms above.

Example Below: "Beck Depression Inventory" AND "Psychological Tests"[Mesh]

Ovid MEDLINE and PubMed also have several useful MeSH terms for finding reviews of measurement instruments, such as:

To find a measurement instrument for a particular topic/variable, try searching by keyword, e.g., quality of life, or MeSH term, if available, e.g., "Quality of Life"[Mesh], and combine with one or more of the MeSH terms above.

Example Below: "Quality of Life"[Mesh] AND "Surveys and Questionnaires"[Mesh]

To find reviews of a particular instrument, try combining the instrument name (in quotes) with one or more of the above MeSH headings:

Example: “Beck Depression Inventory” AND “Sensitivity and Specificity”[Mesh]

How to find a tool by name or on a specific topic in CINAHL:

1. Enter the tool name, for example, NIH Stroke Scale,  or your topic, for example, stroke, in the search box. When looking for a tool by name, make sure to enter all possible ways of naming it, for example, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, NIH Stroke Scale, NIHSS.
2. On the second search line, type in Research Instrument, and select Publication Type (PT) field from the dropdown list to the right of the search.

The same result can be achieved if you have already done your topic search, by:

1. Selecting Edit from your search results
2. Scrolling down to Publication Type in the pop-up form and selecting Research Instruments

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) via ProQuest provides articles describing measures used in education, and in some cases, the actual measure. 

1. Enter your keyword(s) in the first search box, e.g., medical education, and leave the pull-down menu to the right as is.  A specific test name can be substituted for keywords in the first search box.
2. In the next search box type, (test* or measure* or questionnaire* or scale* or survey* or assessment*) and appended, and select Abstract (AB field) from the pull-down menu to the right.  
3. Execute the search by selecting the Search button.

In PsycINFO, use the Tests and Measures field to find measures used in a study. 

Test names appear in both the Abstract field and the Tests & Measures field (these fields are checkboxes below the search bar labelled limits). If the full instrument or items from the instrument are included in the full-text of the article, the test name is marked "Appended" in the Tests & Measures field. "Appended" typically means one of three things: that the full instrument is included as an appendix to the article, that items from the instrument are reproduced in a figure or table, or that items from the test are described in the methods section.

Here are two approaches:

Approach 1:

• PsycINFO opens in Advanced Search mode. Do your search as usual, e.g., cultural humility maps to the subject heading cultural sensitivity (among others). Select Cultural Sensitivity and the text word cultural humility at the bottom of the term list and combine them with OR. These results are part 1 of your search.
• On the Search results screen, or the Basic or the Advanced Search screen you can then check the box for Tests & Measures and run the search.  This means that all of the articles on cultural humility reference a standard measure. This measure may or may not be specific to cultural humility. 

• Adding the word appended to the search will include results in which the test or measure is included in the article. Change your search to a multi-field search by selecting the Multi-Field Search link (to the upper right of the search box).Type appended in the second search box.  Leave the drop-down menu on the right on All Fields. Run the search and the combine with the previous results. 

Approach 2:

Another approach is to look for measures with certain words in their names or titles. 

• Change your search to a multi-field search by selecting the Multi-Field Search link (to the upper right of the search box).
• Enter a word from the name of the measure, or keyword/concept, e.g., culture or cultural
• Select Tests & Measures from the drop-down menu on the right.
• Select AND in the drop-down menu on the left.
• Add the word appended to the search will include results in which the test or measure is included in the article. Type appended in the second search box.  Leave the drop-down menu on the right on All Fields.
• You now have a second set of articles that includes test and measures that have the word cultural.

You will also see the search option "Test DOI" - this is the Digital Object Identified deposited by APA to link to test overview records in PsycTESTS.