Recognizing Creative Potential: An Evaluation of the Usefulness of Creativity Tests 1

Creativity can be understood as production of effective novelty. From the point of view of test psychology, it can be looked at either in terms of personal properties associated with novelty production or of psychological processes leading to novel results. Creativity tests can be divided along these lines into two groups: those concentrating on biographical and personal properties (creative person) and those which aim to measure creative thinking (creative process). In the case of school children, creativity tests are most useful as indicators of potential, since few children produce widely acclaimed creative products. Although a variety of creativity tests exists, their ability to measure real life creativity in a reliable way is open to doubt. This may well be because creativity involves a combination of psychological elements, some of them apparently contradictory or paradoxical, in both cognitive and noncognitive domains. Measurement of creativity probably requires new procedures that cross conventional test boundaries. Despite unresolved questions about their psychometric properties, creativity tests measure something that is not adequately covered by existing tests, especially intelligence and achievement tests, and are worth persisting with.