Measurement of children's creativity by tests

Abstract

After over a 50-year permanent development of tests designed to measure creativity and the results they produced, a question is raised if creativity can be measured by tests at all. A special problem are procedures for measuring creative potential in younger children because children, unlike adults, do not possess creative products that are a single reliable evidence of creativity in the real world. The paper considers test reliability and validity in measuring creativity as well as the dilemma: how much justifiable it is to measure children's creativity by tests if it is not clear what they measure and if there is not a significant relationship between creativity scores and creativity in life. Unsatisfactory creativity test reliability and validity does not mean those tests should be given up the majority of researchers agree. Of the tests of creativity administered in work with the young, the status of Urban-Jellen Test of Creative Thinking - Drawing Production (TCT-DP) is given prominence due to the fact that over the past ten years or so it has been used in a larger number of studies as well as in some studies carried out in this country. In TCT-DP scoring is not based on statistical uncommonness of the figures produced but on a number of criteria derived from Gestalt psychology. The factor analyses of the defined criteria of creativity, applied on samples in various settings yielded that the test contains an essential factor of creativity "novelty".