A Taxonomy and Critique of Measurements Used in the Study of Creativity

Abstract

(from the chapter) the initial purpose of this review is to integrate creativity measurements into a meaningful taxonomy and to illustrate the diversity of the available measurements by citing key examples of the many and varied ways in which creativity has been operationalized / we classify more than 100 examples of creativity measurement into eight categories: (1) tests of divergent thinking; (2) attitude and interest inventories; (3) personality inventories; (4) biographical inventories; (5) ratings by teachers, peers, and supervisors; (6) judgments of products; (7) eminence; and (8) self-reported creative activities and achievements (chapter) the second goal of this review is to use the taxonomy as a framework for discussing the creativity construct in terms of several psychometric characteristics—namely, reliability, discriminant validity, and nomological validity (chapter) the third goal is to describe an analytic framework in which measurement issues can be better addressed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)