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The original 90-item Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI) was a landmark self-report scale in creativity research, and the 28-item brief form developed nearly 20 years ago continues to be a popular measure of everyday creativity. Relatively little is known, however, about the psychometric properties of this widely used scale. In the current research, we conduct a detailed psychometric investigation into the 28-item CBI by applying methods from item response theory using a sample of 2,082 adults. Our investigation revealed several strengths of the current scale: excellent reliability, suitable dimensionality, appropriate item difficulty, and reasonably good item discrimination. Several areas for improvement were highlighted as well: (1) the four-point response scale should have fewer options; (2) a handful of items showed gender-based differential item functioning, indicating some gender bias; and (3) local dependence statistics revealed clusters of items that are redundant and could be trimmed. These analyses support the continued use of the CBI for assessing engagement in everyday creative behaviors but suggest that the CBI could benefit from thoughtful revision.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) takes advantage of exponential growth in our technological abilities to offer an array of new forms of entertainment, learning opportunities, and even psychological interventions and assessments. The field of creativity is a driving force in both large-scale innovations and everyday progress, and imbedding creativity assessment in IVR programs has important practical implications for future research and interventions in this field. Creativity assessment, however, tends to either rely on traditional concepts or newer, yet cumbersome methods. Can creativity be measured within IVR? This study introduces the VIVA, a new IVR-based visual arts creativity assessment paradigm in which user create 3D drawings in response to a prompt. Productions are then rated with modern extensions of a classic product-based approach to creativity assessment. A sample of 67 adults completed the VIVA, further scored using item-response modeling. Results demonstrated the strong psychometric properties of the VIVA assessment, including its structural validity, internal reliability, and criterion validity with relevant criterion measures. Together, this study established a solid proof-of-concept of the feasibility of measuring creativity in IVR. We conclude by discussing directions for future studies and the broader importance and impact of this line of work for the field of creativity and virtual reality.

Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) is a self-report of creative behavior in five distinct domains. The present study aims to translate K-DOCS into Russian and evaluate its psychometric properties. The psychometric analysis was performed on a sample of adults recruited through Yandex Toloka (N = 1011; M[subscript age] = 35.94, SD[subscript age] = 10.95) from various regions of Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the model with five correlated factors showed the best fit to empirical data. All factors demonstrated good internal consistency and moderate test-retest reliability. The correlation and hierarchical regression analyses for K-DOCS factors, creative achievements by CBI (Creative Behavior Inventory), and personality traits by BFI-2 (Big Five Inventory -- 2) yielded evidence for an adequate level of convergent and discriminant validity. We also examined differences across K-DOCS factors among occupations defined by Holland's typology and attempted to investigate K-DOCS measurement invariance across gender. As a result, we obtained evidence supporting the construct validity of K-DOCS and established its partial measurement invariance across gender. The current study shows that Russian K-DOCS has satisfactory psychometric properties and can serve as a trusted guide into various manifestations of humans' creative behavior.

The "standard" definition of creativity as novel and useful describes creative products, but creativity is constituted by processes. This misalignment contributes to the oft-noted challenges of operationalizing creativity. Here, we distinguish creativity as a process from creativity as an attribute (i.e. "creative-ness"). Operating from a priori premises of creativity theory, we develop a process definition of creativity. Specifically, creativity is defined as internal attention constrained by a generative goal. This definition comprises three criteria: 1) attention is directed internally (toward mental representations); 2) attentional operations (e.g. search, manipulation) are constrained to fit parameters of a to-be-achieved goal state (whether or not a goal is actually achieved); and 3) the goal state is generative (not already precisely held in memory). We illustrate how these three definitional process elements align with insights yielded by creativity neuroscience, clarify ontological distinctions (e.g. from mind-wandering and retrieval), and relate the process definition to process-based models. The process definition provides minimal necessity and sufficiency criteria for whether a process should be considered creativity, but does not exclude the many other perceptual, emotional, etc. elements that can contribute to creativity processes. Researchers should specify whether they are studying creativity-as-process vs. "creative-ness," and consider including process-focused assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exchange, the authors each address five questions about creativity, and then provide a final synthesizing response. The five questions they address are: (1) What is creativity? Are there different processes, types, or kinds of creativity, and if so, what are they? (2) What are the major obstacles to people thinking and acting creatively? (3) Do you believe that creativity is intrinsically positive? Why or why not? (4) What are the main ways in which schools and parents should develop creativity in young people? (5) Can creativity be measured? If so, how should creativity be measured, and under what kinds of circumstances? Their answers highlight both similarities and differences in their points of view on creativity as a phenomenon and approaches to theorizing about it, studying it, teaching for it, and measuring it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I highlight some of Arthur Cropley's work that has been the most influential to me as a scholar. Cropley's work has continually pushed the boundaries by exploring what creativity is and isn't, squashing myths, and not making assumptions. I specifically discuss Cropley's research and theory on the importance of convergent thinking, on the role of creativity in science and engineering, and on the potential for evil with creativity.

Organizational innovation involves reconciling many contradictions or paradoxes. Dividing the process of innovation into phases ranging from Activation to Validation and examining each phase in terms of the six Ps of creativity offers a framework for making sense of these contradictions. The Innovation Phase Assessment Instrument (IPAI) was designed to assess organizations according to such an approach. The scale was administered to 454 student volunteers and an analysis of their responses indicated that the IPAI is highly reliable and has substantial construct validity. At a practical level, it can be used for assessing the strengths/weaknesses of organizations in a differentiated way and for making recommendations for improving their capacity for innovation. It is also a source of research questions for examining creativity and innovation in an organizational context.

Self-evaluations or self-perceptions of creativity have been used in the past both as predictors of creative performance and as criteria. Four measures utilizing self-perceptions of creativity were assessed for their usefulness as criterion measures of creativity. Analyses provided evidence of domain specificity of self-perceptions. The scales correlated with self-report measures of creativity, but not with objective measures. Self-perceptions of creativity had strong to moderate relationships with personality and creative self-efficacy. These results suggest that although self-perceptions of creativity may provide some information about creativity, researchers should be cautious when using this measure as a criterion.

The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) is a common creativity assessment. According to this technique, the best judges of creativity are qualified experts. Yet what does it mean to be an expert in a domain? What level of expertise is needed to rate creativity? This article reviews the literature on novice, expert, and quasi-expert creativity ratings. Although current research indicates that novices may be poor choices to be CAT raters, quasi-experts may represent a compromise between ideal scientific rigor and practical time and budget restrictions. Certain guidelines are suggested to make the selection of experts more streamlined, including paying attention to which domain is being assessed.

An important step in understanding domain-specific qualities of creativity is determining what patterns exist in self-perceived creativity across domains and how these patterns associate with other characteristics relevant to creativity. In two studies involving high school (Study 1) and undergraduate (Study 2) students, hierarchical cluster analyses revealed four clusters in self-perceived creativity: “I am creative,” “I am not creative,” “I might be creative in math/science,” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science.” In the first study, a discriminant function analysis indicated that the “I am creative” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science” clusters were associated with higher openness and extraversion. In the second study, the “I am creative” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science” clusters were similarly associated with higher openness, extraversion, creative self-efficacy, and self-esteem, whereas lower agreeableness and conscientiousness were associated with the “I am creative” and “I might be creative in math/science” clusters. These findings suggest that clusters of self-perceived creativity are described by both overall magnitude (low vs. high) and domain (math/science vs. other domains), and relative associations with different personal characteristics vary across these clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the association of Eastern European poets to mental illness. Image of the poet as a doomed, lonely and depressed figure; Link between creative writing and mental illness including mood disorders and general anxieties; Discovery of poets to have among the highest rates of psychosis and depression of all the professions studied.