What do the source codes in a Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) record mean?
Answer
Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) consists of checklists, coding schemes, interview protocols, questionnaires, rating scales, surveys, and tests for medicine, general health, behavioral health and social sciences. The records include usage of a specific measurement instrument within the context of a specific publication. The source codes denote the type of usage.
Primary Source (PS): This is the first confirmed publication and use of the instrument. These records normally include an abstract and other descriptive information about the instrument. In general, if researchers are looking for instruments to use, it is best to limit searches to this source code.
Publisher's Catalog (PC): Similar to a PS, but it is a record of an instrument's publication by a publishing company. Usually, these instruments are available to purchase from the publisher. Some instruments have multiple PC records because they have been distributed by multiple publishers.
Secondary Source (SS): This is a record of a subsequent use of an instrument. These records can show the use of an instrument in a different population from the initial study, provide further reliability and validity information, and generally give a sense of how "popular" the instrument is.
Translated Source (TS): Similar to an SS record, but in this case, the instrument has been translated into a different language for a subsequent use.
Review Source (RS): A record of the instrument where it has been mentioned in a "review" context, like a meta-analysis. These records can be used to find review materials for both the instrument of interest and the measurement topic in general.
Only PS records will indicate that an instrument is available via the HAPI document delivery service. This is shown by a field titled "Availability" that has a statement saying that the instrument is available and providing means of contacting HaPI document delivery department. The Availability field does not appear in records for instruments that aren't available through HaPI.