An investigation of the gender differences in creative thinking abilities among 8th and 11th grade students

Abstract

This study investigated the gender differences in creative thinking subtests between males and females among 8th and 11th grade students. A suburban independent public school district in Minnesota provided student responses to the Torrance Creative Thinking Test (TTCT) Figural Form A. The sample included 996 8th and 748 11th grades students. One-way ANOVAs were used to analyze the differences between males and females in the two study samples. Results of the study revealed that there were statistically significant differences on the majority of the subtests between males and females in favor of the females among both the 8th and 11th grade students. However, there were no statistically significant differences in the fluency subtest between males and females among the 8th grade students. The results also revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the fluency and originality subtests between males and females among the 11th grade students. Educational implications and suggestions for future work were presented.