Mental Measurements Yearbooks Revisited

You’ve been asked to find a test review, but you’re not quite sure how to go about doing it. Here are the steps you need to take:

• Go to Useful Library Links, which is on the Library’s homepage.
• Navigate to Testing and click on Test Reviews Online
• You’ll come to a webpage that contains a search box that looks like this:

• You can search for test review using title, acronym, or author etc. In the example above we’re looking for Test of Written English – Third Edition which is sometimes referred to as TOWL.
• Below is the result returned when we typed in TOWL and checked the acronym box.

• Although only one result was returned above, quite often you’ll get rather a long list with relevancy percentages points next to each result.
• When you click the link you’ll get an abstract which contains the all important volume number. In this example the review of the Test of Written Language – Third Edition is in the thirteenth yearbook.

• Next, go to the Ready Reference section of the Library (hint: it’s next to the reference desk).
• Find the appropriate volume and read your review.
• Once you are done you will need to add your test review citation to your reference list. Buro’s has kindly created a page on how to cite test reviews, there’s also a nice cheat sheet from Keith Stanger (Eastern Michigan University Library.

This blog post is an update of Mental Measurements Yearbooks first published June 11, 2011.

Mental Measurements Yearbooks

If you’ve been asked to review a test, and your teacher has mentioned the words “Mental Measurements Yearbooks,”  (and you’re really not sure how to start) here are some librarian tips on how to get this job done.

Go to Resources for Students on the library homepage and select:

Buros Test Reviews: Index to Mental Measurements Yearbooks.

Next, decide how you want to look up the test. In the example below Acronym has been checked, and towl (Test of Written Language) typed into the search box.

The following shows the result list for this search.

In the example above there is only one result for “Test of Written Language – Third Edition.” Click the link and you’ll get a bibliographic record of the test (see below). Search the record and identify which volume the test is located in, in this particular case the test is in the thirteenth yearbook.

Now, go to the ready reference area of the main library, and find the thirteenth volume (Call# Ref 151.22 B967m 1998). The series “Test Critiques” is also in this area (Call# Ref 150.287 T342c).

Remember, we don’t have actual tests – what we do have are reviews. One nice feature of the Burros website is that it has examples of how to cite test reviews. Click on  how to cite online reviews (left hand side of the Burros homepage) and then keep scrolling down to: “How to cite reviews from the Buros Institute’s Mental Measurements Yearbook.”