Note on Consensual Assessment Technique in Creativity Research

2005 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 592-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Dollinger ◽  
Marina Shafran

Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique is commonly used in research on creative products. This study evaluates a modification of that technique which may facilitate research on creative products by calibrating nonexpert judges to expert judges in previous studies. University students ( N = 200; 59% women, M = 22.3 yr. of age, SD = 5.5) devised drawings to the Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production stimulus. These drawing products were rated by five artist-judges using the CAT and five psychologist-judges who first viewed 16 examples of the range of drawings in a previous study, referred to here as the modified consensual assessment technique. The 20 ratings of product creativity loaded on a single principal component, and the mean ratings correlated .91. Finally, the correlations of these ratings with other measures of creativity were nearly identical. Thus, a slight modification of the technique may be useful in programmatic research when the creativity task is not modified across studies and participants are like the present sample rather than from groups with specialized training or artistic talent.

Author(s):  
John Baer

This article reviews research and theory dealing with the psychology of creativity. It begins with a discussion of the most influential and widely known theory of creativity, which is based on the structure of the intellect model. It then considers four aspects of divergent thinking that are frequently mentioned in the literature, along with two models for classifying creativity: the “four P” model and the four C model. The article describes other theories of creativity, including the chance configuration theory, the propulsion model, and the five-factor theory of personality. Finally, it examines other important issues in creativity research, such as mental illness, gender differences, birth order, and IQ. It also looks at some of the approaches used in the assessment of creativity, including the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and the consensual assessment technique. Finally, it explores the issue of teaching creativity.


Author(s):  
John Baer ◽  
Sharon S. McKool

The most widely used creativity assessments are divergent thinking tests, but these and other popular creativity measures have been shown to have little validity. The Consensual Assessment Technique is a powerful tool used by creativity researchers in which panels of expert judges are asked to rate the creativity of creative products such as stories, collages, poems, and other artifacts. The Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the idea that the best measure of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, a research proposal, or any other artifact is the combined assessment of experts in that field. Unlike other measures of creativity, the Consensual Assessment Technique is not based on any particular theory of creativity, which means that its validity (which has been well established empirically) is not dependent upon the validity of any particular theory of creativity. The Consensual Assessment Technique has been deemed the “gold standard” in creativity research and can be very useful in creativity assessment in higher education.


Author(s):  
Jieun Kwon ◽  
Luke Bromback ◽  
Barry Kudrowitz

The external validity of existing creativity tests was examined in the product-design field. To examine the external validity, this study adopted the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), by which industry leaders directly rate product ideas for their creativity. A simple correlation analysis showed that among three broadly used creativity tests (Remote Associations Test, Alternative Uses Test, and Torrance Test for Creative Thinking), only the Alternative Uses Test (AUT) was found to predict creativity in the product-design industry. In addition to the correlations analysis, two factors, product familiarity and level of interest, were tested for moderation. The results show that familiarity with the product lessens RAT-CAT (Remote Associations Test - Consensual Assessment Technique) correlation, whereas level of interest strengthens the correlation. Thus, the less familiar and more interested an individual is in the product, the more likely the individual’s divergent thinking skills will translate into an actual creative product idea.


Author(s):  
John Baer ◽  
Sharon S. McKool

The Consensual Assessment Technique is a powerful tool used by creativity researchers in which panels of expert judges are asked to rate the creativity of creative products such as stories, collages, poems, and other artifacts. Experts in the domain in question serve as judges; thus, for a study of creativity using stories and poems, a panel of writers and/or teachers of creative writing might judge the creativity of the stories, and a separate panel of poets and/or poetry critics might judge the creativity of the poems. The Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the idea that the best measure of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, a research proposal, or any other artifact is the combined assessment of experts in that field. Unlike other measures of creativity, such as divergent-thinking tests, the Consensual Assessment Technique is not based on any particular theory of creativity, which means that its validity (which has been well established empirically) is not dependent upon the validity of any particular theory of creativity. This chapter explains the Consensual Assessment Technique, discusses how it has been used in research, and explores ways it might be employed in assessment in higher education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 263-272
Author(s):  
Yuan Yin ◽  
Ji Han ◽  
Shu Huang ◽  
Haoyu Zuo ◽  
Peter Childs

AbstractThis paper asked participants to assess four selected expert-rated Taiwan International Student Design Competition (TISDC) products using four methods: Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), Creative Product Semantic Scale (CPSS), Product Creativity Measurement Instrument (PCMI), and revised Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (rCSDS). The results revealed that, between experts and non-experts, the ranking results by the CAT and CPSS were the same, while the ranking results of the rCSDS were different. The CAT, CPSS, and TISDC methods provided the same results indicating that raters may return the same results on creativity assessment, and the results are not affected by the selected methods.If it is necessary to use non-experts to assess creativity and the creativity results are expected to be the same with that of experts, asking non-expert raters to use CPSS to assess creativity and then ranking the creativity score is more reliable. The study offers a contribution to the creativity domain on deciding which methods may be more reliable from a comparison perspective.


2001 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud Hickey

Amabile has proposed that the most valid way to measure creativity is by using experts' subjective assessment of creative products—a technique she has labeled “consensual assessment.” The purpose of this study was to test the reliability of the consensual assessment technique on children's musical compositions and to determine which group of judges provides the most reliable ratings of creativity for music compositions of fourth- and fifth-grade children. The groups that were compared were music teachers, composers, theorists, seventh-grade children, and second-grade children. The interjudge reliabilities for each groups creativity ratings on 11 children's musical compositions were: composers, .04; all music teachers, .64; music theorists, .73; seventh-grade children, .61; and second-grade children, .50. Significant correlations were found between the music teachers and music theorists, and between the two groups of children. There were very weak or negative correlations between the composers' scores and the scores of the other groups.


Psihologija ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Irena Ristic ◽  
Bojana Skorc ◽  
Tijana Mandic

A research of triadic creative processes was conducted based on the assumption that novelty and coherence are basic dimensions of group creativity, variations of which can explain differences in creative achievement. In a workshop, 153 students were divided in triads and created 51 chain-stories. Following the standards of Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), eight independent judges assessed creativity, novelty and coherence in the integral stories. The most representative stories for low, middle and high creativity, were selected and subjected to further analysis. The results show that development of group creativity is conditioned by high level of novelty, and by balanced ratio of novelty and coherence that enable integration of unique ideas in group processes. Symmetrical contribution of members was not confirmed as one of the conditions, suggesting that group creativity is an emerging phenomenon, relying on relations rather than individual contributions of participants.


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