A bit of light relief...

…and maybe a few interesting insights, too, are just what's required as the exam season draws to a close. The recently televised BBC Big Personality Test has so far had well over 200,000 participants in its online test. Clearly people enjoy doing these things and ‘finding out’ something about themselves in the process. Well, either that, or they want to ‘confirm’ their own beliefs about themselves e.g. that they really are an extrovert / a hypochondriac / 'conscientious' / 'agreeable' or whatever it might be.

If you enjoy doing these tests (and I must admit to being rather partial myself), then why not check out the following website: TESTdex.com. I have no idea about the scientific basis of these free tests, so wouldn’t recommend using them in your studies, but for a bit of time out, why not give one or two (or three or four!) a go? Who knows, you might even find inspiration in them...

Internet for Psychology...

…is a free-to-use online tutorial aimed specifically at psychology students in UK universities. It is provided by Intute as part of their ‘Virtual Training Suite’. The psychology tutorial can be accessed here.

The tutorial includes information on:

• journal databases and library catalogues
• internet research skills
• psychology conferences
• blogs, podcasts and discussion lists

...and much more. It also features plenty of links to get you started straight away.

The Psychology Testing Centre...

..is operated by the British Psychological Society (BPS) to provide information on psychological tests. Their website provides, among other things, a directory of psychological tests and a searchable database of reviews of tests. There are also various documents, downloads and contact details available through the site.

Please note that UEL Library does not hold any psychological tests. However, guidance on obtaining tests should be available from either the Psychology Help Desk (AE1.44 in the Arthur Edwards building) or from your tutor.

Finding research which has applied certain tests and measures or methodologies…

…is relatively easy to achieve on PsycINFO. Near the top of the screen in PsycINFO is a link to the database’s indexes. Click on this and then choose an index to browse. For example, you might want to choose ‘methodology’. Enter the name of the methodology you want to browse for (e.g. literature review, systematic review, longitudinal study…), select it from the results list, then add it to your search. In your search box you should now see something that looks like: (ZC "longitudinal study"). Combine this with your search e.g. (ZC "longitudinal study") and social cognition. All search results will then be for research which has applied that particular methodology.

To find research which has applied a particular test or measure, follow the same steps as above, but choose ‘Tests & Measures’ from the list of indexes. It is important to note that this will only find research which has applied the test or measure – it won’t find a copy of the test or measure itself.