MEASURING CREATIVE-THINKING - AN ACTIVITY-BASED APPROACH

The primary objective of this exploratory study was to test activity-based behavioral measures of creative thinking with a sample of Hong Kong fifth-grade school children, and also to determine the concurrent validity between activity-based measures of creative thinking and standard divergent thinking tests. Altogether five creative thinking abilities were measured using the behavioral techniques and the children's scores for fluency, flexibility, and originality were compared with those from the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The construct-related validity among all the different abilities on the behavioral measures was also calculated. Contrary to previous assertions about the lack of creativity among Chinese populations, the Hong Kong children demonstrated their ability to use a number of creative thinking features in order to solve problems. No construct validity was found between the different measures of creativity except between originality and fluency. Possible reasons for this are reviewed. The TTCT and the behavioral techniques were found to have some concurrent validity in relation to fluency and originality on the Verbal Tests. There was no correlation for flexibility. The advantages of using activity-based measurements of creative behavior are discussed.