Center for Families

Director: Volker Thomas, PhD, associate professor, Department of Child Development and Family Studies

Assistant: Autumn Furey Johnson, graduate student, Department of Child Development and Family Studies

Funding: Center for Families

Term of Project: September 2001-May 2002

Description: The purpose of this project was to systematically catalog about 240 assessment instruments that Robert Lewis gave to the center when he retired. The assistant and director developed a cataloging system based on substantive assessment areas (e.g., general functioning, specific areas of functioning) and assessed target populations (e.g., individuals, couples, families, etc.). Then, they acquired cataloging software and entered all instruments into the database after assigning them to the different categories. The hard copies of the instruments were sorted by categories to reflect the same order as in the electronic database.

At completing the catalog, they sent out an announcement to the College of Consumer and Family Sciences making the library available to any interested users. They may contact the project director, search the database, and then copy the instrument of interest. Several graduate students have contacted the director for information when they searched for assessment instruments.