Teachers' Judgments of Creativity and Social Validation of Divergent Thinking Tests

Abstract

Although judgments given by teachers, supervisors, and other significant others have been used in the past as predictors of creativity, divergent thinking tests have yet to be socially validated. For this reason a socially valid instrument was developed from teachers' conceptions of creativity and later used to rate the creativity of gifted, talented, and nongifted children ( N = 240). Correlational analyses indicated that this measure was reliable, significantly correlated with divergent thinking tests, and negatively correlated with IQ. It was concluded that (a) the social validation paradigm is applicable to the assessment of creativity, and (b) divergent thinking tests have social validity in terms of teachers' judgments.