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".

Posle više od pedeset godina kontinuiranog rada na konstruisanju testova kreativnosti i rezultata koje su oni dali, postavlja se pitanje da li se kreativnost uopšte može meriti testovima. Poseban problem predstavlja ispitivanje kreativnosti na mlađim uzrastima jer deca, za razliku od odraslih, nemaju kreativne proizvode koji su jedini siguran dokaz kreativnosti u realnosti. U radu se razmatraju metrijske karakteristike testova kojima se meri kreativnost i dilema koliko ima smisla meriti kreativnost dece testovima, ako nije sasvim jasno šta oni mere i šta znači skor koji je pojedinac dobio za njegovu kreativnost kasnije u životu. Nezadovoljavajuće metrijske karakteristike testova kreativnosti ne znače da ih treba napustiti, saglasna je većina istraživača. Posebna pažnja posvećena je statusu Urban-Jelenovog testa crtanja za merenje kreativnog mišljenja (TCT-DP) među testovima kreativnosti koji se primenjuju u radu sa mladima. Test je izdvojen zbog činjenice da je korišćen u većem broju istraživanja u poslednjih deset godina, kao i da su neka od tih istraživanja rađena u našoj zemlji. TCT-DP pokušava da prevaziđe nedostatke statističkog određivanja pokazatelja kreativnosti, izvodeći indikatore iz geštalt psihologije. Faktorske analize definisanih pokazatelja kreativnosti, sprovedene na uzorcima u različitim sredinama, potvrđuju da test sadrži suštinsku odliku kreativnosti - novinu.