Assessment of Creativity in Dance in Children: Development and Validation of a Test Instrument

A central key-component in children's dance education is the promotion of creativity. This involves movement exploration, experimenting, and improvising with movement material, composing, and choreographing. These are necessary prerequisites for aesthetic and artistic development. Valid domain-specific test instruments are needed for the evaluation of creativity in dance. For this purpose, a test instrument for the assessment of creativity in dance for 3rd to 6th graders was developed. The aim of the present study was to investigate the construct validity of the Creativity in Dance Test (CDT) (N= 223,M= 9.55 +/- 1.29 years, girls:n= 110, boys:n= 113). The exploratory factor analysis (KMO =.731; Bartlett =.000; MSA >.50) showed a two-factorial structure, accounting for 51.8% of total variance. The CDT meets validity demands and thus is suitable for the evaluation of creativity in dance.