Abstract: This paper presents a review of the literature on the measurement of creativity. Creativity definitions are discussed as a starting point for understanding the nature of this construct. The four major approaches to measuring creativity (process, person, product and press) are reviewed, pointing out commonly used instruments as well as the advantages and weaknesses of each approach. This review reveals that the measurement of creativity is an unsettled issue, and that the existing instruments purporting to measure creativity suffer from serious conceptual and psychometric shortcomings. Research gaps and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Results
From the 2,064 papers identified by the search process, 221 papers were selected based on screening titles and abstracts. Among these, 152 papers met the inclusion criteria. The 152 included papers addressed the measurement of creativity and significant issues related to this measurement. Four distinct approaches to measuring creativity (process, person, product and press), in addition to the most commonly used instruments in each approach were identified. In the following, we first discuss creativity definitions, pointing to the different categories of these definitions. Then, we describe the approaches to measuring creativity and the advantages and weaknesses of each of these approaches, with an emphasis on the psychometric properties of the most common instruments used in each approach.
Defining creativity
Creativity has proven, over the years, to be difficult to define and measure due to its complex and multidimensional nature (Barbot et al., 2011; Batey & Furnham, 2006; Cropley, 2000; Runco, 2004, 2007; Treffinger et al., 2002). Treffinger (1996) reviewed the creativity literature and presented more than 100 different definitions for this concept. Despite these different definitions, the majority of creativity studies tend to employ only a few of these definitions, whereas other studies avoid providing a definition of this construct at all (Kaufman, Plucker, & Russell, 2012; Plucker & Makel, 2010). Furthermore, researchers and educators may use the term creativity to refer to entirely different aspects, including cognitive processes, personal characteristics and past experiences (Treffinger et al., 2002). In addition, researchers sometimes use terms such as innovation, invention, imagination, talent, giftedness and intelligence interchangeably with creativity.
In general, definitions of creativity typically reflect at least one of four different perspectives: cognitive processes associated with creativity (later in this paper referred to as ‘process’), personal characteristics of creative individuals (‘person’), creative products or outcomes (‘product’) and the interaction between the creative individual and the context or environment (‘press’) (Couger, Higgins, & McIntyre, 1993; Horn & Salvendy, 2006; Rhodes, 1961; Thompson & Lordan, 1999; Zeng et al., 2011).
With regard to the process perspective, Torrance (1977), as a pioneer in creativity research, defined creativity as the process of perceiving problems or gaps in knowledge, developing hypotheses or propositions, testing and validating hypotheses and finally sharing the results. Similarly, Mednick (1962) proposed that creativity involves the process of bringing associative elements together into new combinations to meet the task requirements. Guilford (1950) suggested some factors for interpreting variations in creativity including sensitivity to problems, fluency, flexibility, originality, synthesizing, analyzing, reorganizing or redefining, complexity and evaluating. In his Structure-of-Intellect (SOI) Model, Guilford (1975) considered creativity as a form of problem solving and distinguished between two types of cognitive operations: divergent production and convergent production. Divergent production is a broad search used in open problems to generate logical answers or alternatives, whereas convergent production is a focused search that leads to the generation of a specific logical imperative for a problem, in which a particular answer is required. Guilford (1975) considered divergent production process to be more relevant to successful creative thinking.
Focusing on the person perspective, a wide array of personal characteristics and traits have been suggested as being associated with creativity including attraction to complexity, high energy, behavioural flexibility, intuition, emotional variability, self-esteem, risk taking, perseverance, independence, introversion, social poise and tolerance to ambiguity (Barron & Harrington, 1981; Feist, 1998; James & Asmus, 2000-2001; Runco, 2007). However, having such traits does not actually guarantee the occurrence of creative achievement, the effect of intrinsic motivation still remains (Amabile, 1983). In other words, personality may be seen as related to the motivation to be creative rather than to creativity itself, with both of these being necessary for creative achievement (James & Asmus, 2000-2001). Task motivation is one of three key components in Amabile’s (1983, 1988, 1996) componential model of creativity that are necessary for creative performance, together with domain-relevant skills (including knowledge about the domain, technical skills and domain-related talent) and creativity-relevant skills (including personality characteristics and cognitive styles).
By turning the focus of defining creativity towards the creative products, Khatena and Torrance (1973) defined creativity as constructing or organizing ideas, thoughts and feelings into unusual and associative bonds using imagination power. Gardner (1993) stated that creative individuals are able to solve problems, model products, or define new questions in a novel but acceptable way in a particular cultural context. Creativity is also seen as the ability to produce or design something that is original, adaptive with regard to task constraints, of high quality (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2007; Lubart & Guignard, 2004; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999), useful, beautiful and novel (Feist, 1998; Mumford, 2003; Ursyn, 2014).
Finally, regarding the press perspective, that is, the interaction between the creative person and the environment or climate, McLaren (1993) stated that creativity could not be fully understood through human endeavour without taking into account its socio-moral context and intent (James, Clark, & Cropanzano, 1999). Investigating the environment for creativity therefore requires that all the factors that promote or inhibit creativity should be taken into consideration (Thompson & Lordan, 1999). In the componential model of organizational innovation and creativity, Amabile (1988) proposed three broad environmental factors related to creativity: organizational motivation or orientation to innovate, available resources and management practices. Geis (1988) identified five factors to ensure a creative environment: a secure environment with minimum administrative or financial intervention, an organizational culture that makes it easy for people to create and discover independently, rewards for performance to support intrinsic motivation, managerial willingness to take risks in the targeted areas of creativity and providing training to enhance creativity. Several studies have indicated the impact of climate or environment variables on creative achievement (e.g. Couger et al., 1993; Paramithaa & Indarti, 2014), particularly with respect to the initial exploratory stages of creative endeavours in which individuals’ need for approval and support plays an important role in motivating their further efforts (Abbey & Dickson, 1983).
Despite these different perspectives in defining creativity, some aspects are shared by many researchers. Researchers generally agree that creativity involves the production of novel and useful responses (Batey, 2012; Mayer, 1999; Mumford, 2003; Runco & Jaeger, 2012). These two characteristics, novelty and usefulness, are widely mentioned in most definitions of creativity (Zeng, Proctor, & Salvendy, 2009), although there is still some debate about the definitions of these two terms (Batey, 2012; Batey & Furnham, 2006; Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Another area of consensus is that creativity is regarded as a multifaceted phenomenon that involves cognitive, personality and environmental components (Batey & Furnham, 2006; Lemons, 2011; Runco, 2004). As Harrington (1990, p.150) asserted “Creativity does not “reside” in any single cognitive or personality process, does not occur at any single point in time, does not “happen” at any particular place, and is not the product of any single individual”.
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