Commonly used tests

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and its revised form (EPQ-R) measures extraversion, neuroticism and/or psychoticism. The short form of the EPQ-R is in the public domain.

• Eysenck, S. Eysenck, H. and Barrett, P. (1985) A revised version of the psychoticism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 6 (1), 21-29

A public domain version suitable for use with children is also available.

• Corulla, W. J. (1990) A revised version of the Psychoticism scale for children. Personality and Individual Differences, 11(1), 65–76.

Five Factor Model of Personality

If you are interested in agreeableness, conscientiousness and/or openness to experience in addition to extraversion and neuroticism then you will require a measure of the Five Factor Model of Personality.  This commercially published test devised by Costa and McCrae has two earlier versions the NEO-PI-R (240 items) and NEO-FFI (64 items) and a later version NEO-PI-3 which is also suitable for children aged 12 or above.  The NEO-4 measures only extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and agreeableness traits.

There are also public domain sources for five factor model traits.

• Goldberg, L. R. (1992) The Development of Markers for the Big-Five Factor Structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26–42.
• Saucier, G. (1994) Mini-markers: a brief version of Goldberg's unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63, 506-516.
• International Personality Item Pool
• McCrae, R.R. and  Costa, P.T., Jr. (1985) Updating Norman's "Adequate Taxonomy": Intelligence and personality dimensions in natural language questionnaires. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 710-721.

Aggression

The Aggression Questionnaire is in the public domain and has good psychometric characteristics.

• A.H. Buss, A. H. and Perry, M. (1992) The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6, 452-459.

Sensation seeking

For the trait of Sensation-Seeking, various forms of Zuckerman's sensation-seeking scale are in the public domain, but beware of older versions with outdated wording.  The latest (1994) version of this scale is available in

• Zuckerman., M. (1994) Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation seeking.  Cambridge University Press.

Individually administered tests

These batteries require some investment of time for familiarisation and training, and they can take up to two hours to administer. Short forms or sub-tests may be used to save time.

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV) is suitable for most adult samples.

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-V (WISC-V) may be used to test children and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-III)  tests even younger children.

Group administered tests

These tests of intelligence generally involve less training and time to administer.

Raven's Progressive Matrices series will give a measure of non-verbal intelligence. Coloured Progressive Matrices test younger children, Standard Progressive Matrices test average intelligence adults and older children and Advanced Progressive Matrices  can be used to test higher ability adults. The recently-added SPM-plus is designed to assess both the average and advanced range. The Mill Hill Vocabulary Scales partners the Raven's Progressive Matrices  and measure verbal IQ in children (Junior test) or in adults (Senior test).

The Cattell Culture Fair Test  has various versions for testing non-verbal intelligence in different ability ranges.

The Alice Heim range tests for verbal and non-verbal ability  in average or above-average adults. The AH4 is suitable for average ability samples, and the AH5 and AH6 tests are suitable for groups of higher than average ability.

There are hundreds of memory tests assessing different aspects of memory in different modalities.  Many are not proprietary and may be devised by consulting a reference describing the test.

Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT)

The Auditory Verbal Learning Test is relatively brief and tests many aspects of memory. It may be found in

Lezak, Muriel; Howieson, Diane B ; Bigler, Erin D and Tranel, Daniel (2012) Neuropsychological assessment. 5th edition.

Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS-IV)

Designed to assess auditory, visual working memory  and visual declarative memory,  the Wechsler Memory Scale may be used for a more extensive assessment of adolescents, adults and older adults.

To assess general non-clinical mood states you are recommended to use one of the more recent scales which assesses two or three dimensions.

The UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist is convenient, comprehensive and free, and may be constructed by reading the appropriate reference carefully.

G. Matthews, D.M. Jones  and  A.G. Chamberlain (1990)  Refining the measurement of mood: the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist, British Journal of Psychology, 81, 17-42.

A Mental Health Portfolio and Measures in Health Psychology  contain various assessments :

• Anxiety  (such as the Fear Questionnaire, Mobility Inventory for Agoraphobia, Clinical Anxiety Scale, and the  Padua Inventory)
• Depression  (for example Inventory for Depressive Symptomatology, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale)
• Interpersonal difficulties - (Social Activities and Distress Scale, Inventory of Interpersonal Problems, Golombok Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction)
• Habit disorder  (Morgan-Russell Assessment Schedule, Body Shape Questionnaire, Short Alcohol Dependence Data Questionnaire)
• Stress and Coping   (Hassles and Uplifts Scales, Significant Others Scale, Coping Responses Inventory, COPE)
• Psychological adjustment to illness - (McGill Pain Questionnaire, Pain Coping Strategies Questionnaire,  Acceptance of Illness Scale)

Also included is the General Health Questionnaire-12.

Scales from these collections may be copied as required and have some supporting literature, norms and scoring instructions.