Doctoral students often use or adapt others’ instruments or develop new instruments for for use with particular populations or in specific settings. Often, the complete instruments are included in the Appendix.
If you plan to use a specific instrument, search for by name to see if / how others have used it and determine if it is appropriate for your research project.
If you do use a tool included in another dissertation, you must obtain the proper permissions from the test author and/or publisher before using it in your research.
VCU Libraries provides access to the electroniic full-test versions of nearly all dissertations published in the U.S. since 1997 through this database. You can search it directly from this page or access it from the Databases A-Z (D) list on the VCU Libraries' homepage (www.library.vcu.edu).
Dissertations and Theses Full Text (Proquest)
Search Tips:
Enter any combination of keywords with this exact search phrase including parentheses (test or measure or scale or instrument)
Once you have a set of citations, check the abstracts to see if the author mentions administering or designing a measurement tool. If so, it's likely that a reprint of the measure will appear in the appendix of the dissertation.