Resource Center - 0348 Alumni Hall
The Resource Center (RC) contains valuable resource materials for undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. The best way to receive quick assistance from an RC graduate assistant is to visit AH-0348 during regular business hours. For questions that are not urgent, you can use siuerc@hotmail.com.
Hours of Operation
The RC is open approximately 40 hours per week during the fall and spring semesters and closed throughout the summer months. Check for hours of operation posted on the RC door or email the office for this semester's hours.
Psychological Tests
One of the primary functions of the RC is to maintain the Department's Psychological Test Inventory. The RC graduate assistants can assist students and faculty in locating tests for research, clinical or academic applications. The test inventory is used by graduate students who are learning to administer and interpret psychological tests in the context of one of the Department's various graduate assessment courses. Graduate students enrolled in clinical practica experiences or serving as Head Start graduate assistants also use the tests in their roles as clinicians in training. Undergraduates may use some of the tests while completing coursework or supervised research. However, there are Department of Psychology Guidelines limiting the use of our psychological tests to individuals trained in their administration and interpretation. The tests are also used for research projects conducted by students and faculty in the Department. A student wishing to examine or check a test out of the RC must be working with a departmental faculty member who is responsible to supervise the test use by the student. The faculty member must sign an Authorization Form which authorizes the student to examine or check out the test(s) authorized by the student's faculty supervisor.
Locating Psychological Measures and Research Questionnaires
The RC has several books containing hundreds of published research questionnaires (which you can search through in this file).
- Communication Research Measures II: A Sourcebook
- Measures for Clinical Practice and Research: A Sourcebook (Volume 2: Adults)
- Measures for Clinical Practice and Research: A Sourcebook (Volume 1: Couples, Families and Children)
- Handbook of Marketing Scales (Third Edition)
- Handbook of Organizational Measurement
- Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures
- Handbook of Scales for Research in Crime and Delinquency (Perspectives in Law and Psychology, Volume 5)
- Handbook of Tests and Measurement in Education and the Social Sciences (Second Edition)
- Marketing Scales Handbook (Volume 4)
- Measurement Instruments in Clinical Ethics
- Measuring Health: A Guide to Rating Scales and Questionnaires
- Measures of Religiosity
- Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes (Volume 1)
- Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (Second Edition) *
- Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality for Use in Health Research *
- Taking the Measure of Work: A Guide to Validated Scales for Organizational Research and Diagnosis
* These searchable pdf files are only available online (just click the links)
To easily locate measures within any of the books listed above, open this text file, which contains the full list of all measures contained within the above books. To quickly search through the file using keywords, use Ctrl-F (i.e., Edit > Find). Browsing the list of available measures may help generate or refine your research ideas.
If you are having trouble finding a measure that fits your needs, you may want to visit the International Personality Item Pool or the Social-personality Psychology Questionnaire Instrument Compendium to search the hundreds of instruments that can be downloaded there. A careful search in a popular search engine such as Google may also help because many well-established questionnaires are available online.
You will be most successful finding a measure you are looking for through a search engine if you already have an example item from the test (perhaps obtained from a research article you read). For example, if you type "When good things happen to me, it affects me strongly" (with quotes) into Google, you will quickly find the full text of the BIS/BAS scales. If you don't have an example item, at least try searching on the name of the measure (e.g., "BIS/BAS Scales"). Of course, you should always carefully inspect any instrument that you find online to make sure it is accurate.
Books, Journals, and Theses
The RC maintains a variety of books and journals that are of interest to students and faculty. Our book inventory includes books on topics such as getting into graduate school, psychological assessment, and test reviews and critiques. The RC also maintains copies of all graduate theses completed within the department. For a copy of a particular thesis, please email siuerc@hotmail.com. (Please allow up to one week for a response, and be advised that in the summer months, the Resource Center has very limited hours and typically closes after July classes have ended.)
Computer and Audio Visual Equipment
Audio visual and computer equipment is available for use by faculty, staff and students in the RC including:
Desktop computers with SPSS and the capability to score psychological tests
Video recorders
Computer projectors/clickers for presentations
