In Wallas and Kogan's (1965)
assessment of creativity examinees are asked to come up with
many possible items that contain a specific component, such as
with wheels, round things, or things that make noise.
Name things with wheels:
a
car
a truck
a train
a go cart
your mind
Scoring is comprised of four components:
Originality - each response it compared to the total
amount of responses from all of the people you gave the test
to. Reponses that were given by only 5% of your group are
unusual (1 point), responses that were given by only 1% of your
group are unique - 2 points). Total all the point.
Higher scores indicate creativity*
Fluency - or total. Just add up all the responses.
In this example it is 5.
Flexibility - or different category, in this case 2 (the
first four are all methods of transportation but the "wheel
turning in your mind is a different category from
transportation)
Elaboration - amount of detail (for Example "a car" = 0
whereas "a car racing down the street" = 1 (another point is
given for the detail of where the car is going).
*You might have noticed that the higher fluency the higher
the originality (if you did "good for you!") This is a
contamination problem and can be corrected by using a corrective
calculation for originality
(originality = originality/fluency).
Any one can administer Wallas and Kogan's
(1965) test. No training required. Materials
can be created by the examiner and individually administered to
the examinees or shown on an overhead projector to a group of
examinees.
Typically the test is administered in a classroom setting.
However, the test can also been an unlimited time "take home":
since time is an issue. The majority of responses given by
the examinees in the first few minutes tend to be their least
creative.
Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task (1967)
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (1974)
Back to Creativity Test: Overview page.
Back to
Creative Thinking Handout Index
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