Specific information provided about measurement instruments is listed in separate fields in the Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) database. Each of these fields is listed below, along with a brief description of the information that it provides about the given instrument. The actual order of the fields differs in the EBSCO and OvidSP formats, so the fields are listed in the order in which they appear.
OvidSP Database Fields
| FIELD NAME | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Accession Number | Each record describing a specific instrument is assigned a unique identifying number (e.g., 345216). This number is called the Accession Number. |
| Title | This field lists the title of the instrument. |
| Notes Title | This field is used when there is an abbreviation in the title of an instrument. We explain the abbreviation in this field. |
| Acronym | This field lists the acronym (abbreviation) for the measure, if one exists. |
| Instrument Author | This field lists the author(s) of the instrument, in other words, the investigators/researchers who originally developed or designed the instrument. |
| Notes Author | This field is used when author(s) of a given instrument are not clearly designated. In these cases, one of the following statements appears in the Notes Author field: HaPI attributes authorship of the instrument to authors of the Source. |
| Source Code | This field indicates whether the instrument that was administered to participants in the Source article is a Primary Source, Secondary Source, Translated Source, Publisher’s Catalog, or Review Source measure. (Click here for definitions of Source Codes.) |
| Source | This field contains the complete bibliographic citation (e.g., journal article, book chapter, conference presentation, technical report, doctoral dissertation) in which the instrument listed in the Title field was administered or reviewed. |
| Language | This field indicates the language in which respondents or participants described in the Source article completed the instrument. |
| Abstract | This field contains information describing the instrument listed in the Title field of a Primary Source record. The abstract describes the purpose of the instrument, what the instrument is designed to assess, and may provide additional information (e.g., what participants are instructed to do). Not all records may contain an abstract. |
| Response Options | This field provides information about the item format (i.e., response options) used in the instrument to respond to individual items or questions. |
| Number of Questions | This field indicates the number of questions or items contained in an Instrument. This field is only used for Primary Source instruments. |
| Subscales/Factors | This field lists subscales, factors, or dimensions of an instrument, if there are any. This field is only used for Primary Source instruments. |
| Sample Items | This field lists actual sample items from the instrument and is only used for Primary Source instruments. |
| Reliability | This field provides information about an instrument’s reliability (e.g., internal consistency, test-retest reliability, inter-rater reliability). |
| Validity | This field provides information about an instrument’s validity (e.g., concurrent, construct, content, convergent, criterion, discriminant). |
| Measure Descriptors | Measure descriptors are index terms used by the HaPI database to describe the nature and meaning of an instrument. To index key terms, HaPI uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), the National Library of Medicine’s controlled vocabulary thesaurus. |
| Sample Descriptors | Sample descriptors are index terms used by the HaPI database to describe the respondents (i.e., participants or subjects) to whom the instrument was administered in the Source article. To index key terms, HaPI uses the MeSH thesaurus. |
| Availability | This field is used to inform patrons if a copy of the instrument is available from Behavioral Measurement Database Services. If an instrument is available, instructions to obtain a copy of the instrument are provided in this field. |
| Notes General | This field is used when HaPI has found no verification of a given instrument’s title, acronym (if one exists), author(s), and reference. In these cases, the following statement appears in the Notes General field: Title, Acronym, Author(s), and the Reference are those as cited in this Source. |
| References | This field is used to cite reference(s) related to the given instrument. The reference(s) cited in this field may include the original citation describing the development of the instrument as well as other relevant citations listed in the Source article or mentioned in the Abstract field. |
| Analyst | This field indicates that the record has been prepared by members of the HaPI Staff. |
| Supported By | This field is used to acknowledge support and/or funding from external agencies or companies. |
| Year | This field lists the year in which the Source citation was published. |
| Update Code | This field lists the date when the record became available in the Ovid database. |
Definitions of Source Codes (Ovid) or Source Notes (EBSCO)
- A Primary Source instrument is one that has been developed by the author(s) of the journal article listed in the Source field.
- A Secondary Source instrument is usually one that was developed by author(s) other than the author(s) of the Source article. In some cases, the author(s) of the Source article developed the instrument, but reported its development in an earlier publication.
- A Translated Source instrument is an existing instrument (Secondary or Primary) that has been translated from its original language (i.e., the language in which it was originally written) to another language (the language in which the instrument was administered in the Source article).
- A Publisher’s Catalog instrument is one that is taken from the catalog of a company that provides tests and assessment tools.
- A Review Source instrument is one that is described or evaluated in the Source article, rather than administered to respondents. A Review Source instrument may also be a measure that is taken from a compendium or compilation describing instruments.
- An Extracted Subscale is a subset of items (i.e., a subscale) taken from a larger measurement instrument.
- An Extracted Catalog is a subset of items (i.e., a subscale) taken from a larger measurement instrument in a Publisher’s Catalog.