Browsing Psyctests on Apa Psycnet

PsycTESTS is one of APA's newest databases, and it already contains many thousands of tests. And, we're adding more each month. Although you might conduct an advanced search when you know exactly what you are looking for sometimes it helps to browse through the materials to help guide and focus your ideas. Many people prefer the serendipity of browsing. In this tutorial, I'll demonstrate how to browse the PsycTESTS database on the APA PsycNET platform. When you click browse, you move to a page where you can browse through any of the databases that you access on the platform. Be sure to click the tab for PsycTESTS. On the left-hand rail, we see four possibilities for browsing through the contents of the database. First you can browse by test name. Let's say you remember reading about a test that was used to assess whether participants could determine complex mental states from facial expressions. And, you think it started with the word "face." You can just type in the beginning of the test name, or even an acronym, to jump right to those results. Or you might just click the letters to jump through the alphabetical list. On the other hand, you may not have a particular test in mind, but you know what concept you want a test to look at. You can browse by construct to find tests that focus on your topic. First I have clicked "By Construct," and once I find a relevant construct, I can see the number of tests available in parentheses. For instance, this time, let's say my topic is narcissism. By clicking the plus sign, I see the exact test names, and clicking any one of these will bring me to the record for that test. As you can see, not only will you find the bibliographic information about the test, in many cases the test itself is available for download. You can also browse by author name. If you know the author you are looking for, you can just type his or her last name to jump right to the test by that author. Here I am looking for tests by Rita Samper. I just find her name on the list and click the plus sign to see all the tests available. Finally, you can browse by year. The number in parentheses with each year indicates the number of tests available from that year. As you can see, the tests in the database have both currency and historical value. We have a large number of very recent tests, and we'll be adding more each month. We also have many tests from each decade of the 20th century. This archive of historical tests gives you, the researcher, the potential to track the development of a test, and testing constructs, over time. APA is updating the PsycTESTS database every month, and we are accepting submissions from authors, publishers, and libraries with test collections. We expect the database to grow very quickly. For more about PsycTESTS, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit the APA website. Thank you.