The contemporary view to creativity and the problems of it's measurement

Abstract

The article presents the attempt to evaluate the most common types of measures used to assess creativity according to the dominant contemporary theoretical approach to the phenomenon. Creativity is now usually considered to be the characteristic of behavior, but not the inner facture of an individual. Two main groups of the measures may be identified among most widely used instruments. The first group includes tests of divergent thinking, personality, attitude and interest inventories. These are psychometric instruments mainly and can be considered as objective. Yet, they measure only the inner correlates of creative behavior: divergent thinking abilities, personality traits etc. The implication that any of these could be one of the main factors influencing creative behavior lacks empirical evidence obviously. One who scores high on the tests often demonstrates any distinctive creative performance in real life. The second group includes such instruments as ratings by teachers, peers or supervisors, judgements of products, registration of indicators of eminence et al. Their distinctive factors in comparison with the first group is taking into consideration the real-life creative production. But here the problem of their objectivity arises acutely. It is not possible to establish fixed criteria for evaluation of product, or behavior, creativity. Thus, the problem of the measurement of creativity to be solved successfully requires creativity from the mea users themselves.