Free instruments

Cleared instruments, best rights class first 2

Not recommended: rights unresolved 2

Permission to use these was not confirmed. Do not put them in a proposal until you have it in writing.

• Rights unresolved Housing Instability Scale (HIS) English/Spanish validation reported. Strong outcome fit, but do not clear rights automatically. A standalone downloadable form is unverified; the items are on an opened HTML page. Source
• Rights unresolved Accountable Health Communities housing instability/quality questions EN verified. Federal hosting does not resolve the third-party permission language. Source

Looks free, is not 15

Each of these circulates widely and carries a licensing restriction. The wording is quoted from the publisher's page.

• Client Satisfaction Questionnaire, CSQ-8. Use requires "express written permission" and "remission of use fees." Applies to service and research use. It also measures satisfaction, not outcome change. Licensing page
• Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, MMAS-8 / MMAS-4. Owner license pricing posts fees of $7 per MMAS-8 administration and $4 per MMAS-4 administration, with other licensing arrangements. Licensing page
• Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, CD-RISC. The author's request form refers to "terms of use and payment details"; PhenX confirms a licensing agreement is required. Current owner-site pricing is unverified because those sites did not open. Licensing page
• Outcome Rating Scale, ORS. Agency and group paper licenses carry fees; electronic or digital use is excluded from that license. Not universally paid, but not blanket-free for a nonprofit agency. Licensing page
• Session Rating Scale, SRS. Same agency-fee and electronic-use restrictions as the ORS. It also measures therapeutic alliance rather than participant outcomes. Licensing page
• SDQ embedded in your digital product. Electronic reproduction requires authorization and may involve payment. This does not invalidate the conditional paper-use entry in the instrument list. Licensing page
• PRAPARE embedded in a platform. Developer agreements are listed at $5,000 per year (regular) or $10,000 per year (enterprise). Royalty-free end-user agreements are a separate category. These are the published 2024 terms, not a verified 2026 quotation. Licensing page
• North Carolina Family Assessment Scale, General Services (NCFAS-G). The license is issued to the purchasing agency, and cost depends on the number of workers using it. Viewing a sample is not permission to administer. Licensing page
• Parenting Stress Index, 4th ed., Short Form (PSI-4-SF). The publisher's purchase page lists paid materials. Its 36 items also exceed the 30-item length limit. Licensing page
• BASC-3 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BESS). The publisher page lists paid forms and digital administrations and Qualification Level B. Short administration and simple completion do not make it public domain. Licensing page
• Drug Abuse Screening Test, DAST-10. The instrument is under copyright: "Copyright 1982 by Harvey A. Skinner, PhD, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada." The PhenX page allows reproduction "for non-commercial use (clinical, research, training purposes)" with credit to the author, and says it "may be obtained through" CAMH. Conditional, not unrestricted; CAMH's own terms were not opened. Licensing page
• Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Beck Anxiety Inventory. The publisher sells it: the Pearson page lists the BDI-2 Complete Kit (Print) at $195.70, with items from $3.90, and shows Qualification level B. Licensing page
• Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). PAR publishes it and the site states "All rights reserved." A modified version requires a permission request to PAR. Licensing page
• Outcomes Star (family of Stars). The site refers to licence holders and states "all Outcomes Star licence holders must complete our core training programme." A licence is required; the page opened does not state fees. Licensing page
• PROMIS short forms embedded in an electronic platform. The PROMIS terms state "Permission to use PROMIS INSTRUMENTS does NOT grant permission to modify the wording or layout of items," or "to distribute to others for a fee, or to translate items into any other language." The need for HealthMeasures Electronic Administration Permission (HEAP) when embedding in a platform comes from secondary sources and was not found in the terms page. Licensing page