Selecting and Describing Your Research Instruments

Emerging researchers are often surprised to learn that instrument selection is a complex and important step in the process of research design. This concise guide explains how to identify appropriate instruments, select the best ones for the job, and properly describe the instruments so that others will know how and why they were chosen.

Each chapter in the book focuses on a specific aspect of instrument selection, with illuminating examples and helpful worksheets to fill out along the way. Part of APA's Concise Guides to Conducting Behavioral, Health, and Social Science Research series, this book is aimed at undergraduate students in research methods courses or others with a lab or research project.

Series Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Identifying and Defining the Constructs and Variables to Measure
2. Types of Instruments
3. Identifying Available Instruments
4. Gathering Information
5. Organizing and Taking Good Notes
6. Using the Evidence to Guide Your Selection
7. Obtaining Permission and Piloting the Instrument
8. Following Ethical Principles and Guidelines
9. Describing the Instruments Effectively for Different Audiences
10. Troubleshooting

Conclusion

Vocabulary

References

Index

About the Author

About the Series Editor

Kelly McClure, PhD, is associate professor and chair of psychology at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her doctorate from Drexel University in 2002.

She was a co-editor of Practitioners Guide to Empirically Based Measures of Depression and is currently an associate editor of Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice.

Her main research interests are in social problem solving and coping with cancer.