APA PsycTests^® can help you find an existing test that you can reuse in your own research. In doing so, you may want to evaluate the psychometric data that were reported by the original test developer.  

Psychometrics is the branch of psychology that studies the quantification and measurement of mental attributes, behavior, and performance, as well as the design, analysis, and improvement of the tests and other instruments used in such measurement.  

You will find three types of psychometrics included in an APA PsycTests record, when the information is provided by the original author and publisher of the test.  

• Reliability describes the consistency of scores across contexts (e.g., different times, items, or raters), and provides an estimate of the amount of score variance that is due to true variance between subjects rather than to error.  
• Validity is the degree to which a test or instrument is capable of measuring the stated construct, rather than some other trait or concept.   
• Factor Analysis is a broad family of mathematical procedures that reduce a set of interrelations among stated factors to a smaller set of unobserved latent factors.  

Please note these fields are free-text and include information verbatim as the author reported it in their publication.  
 
In the APA PsycTests record, you may also notice the related psychometric field Test Methodology.  

Added in 2019, this new field Test Methodology allows you to limit a search based on a particular type of reliability, validity or factor analysis.  

You can add Test Methodology to your search on the advanced search page.  

Our website includes a list of the values and definitions included in Test Methodology.  

If you need more information about the psychometrics of a test found in APA PsycTests, you can always: 

• check the Correspondence field for author contact information or 
• check the Source Used field for a doi link to the original full-text publication that developed the test. 

The screenshots above show how these fields appear in the APA PsycNet^® version of APA PsycTests. 

You can see how this looks on EBSCOhost, Ovid, or ProQuest in this step-by-step guide.

Related Resource: How Permissions Work in APA PsycTests