A New Measurement of Scientific Creativity: the Study of its Psychometric Properties

• Main Authors: María-Rosario Bermejo, María-José Ruiz-Melero, Javier Esparza, Mercedes Ferrando, Rosa Pons
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Servicio de Publicaciones
• Series: Anales de Psicología
• Subjects: Gifted; talented; scientific creativity; creative abilities
• Online Access: http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0212-97282016000300005&lng=en&tlng=en

The purpose of this paper is to study the psychometric proprieties of a new test aimed to measure scientific creativity, the Creative Scientific Ability Test (C-SAT, Sak & Ayas, 2011). The test has been validated in different Turkish samples, showing an adequate reliability (α = .87, Ayas & Sak, 2014). The test is composed of five tasks that measure scientific creativity in different areas of knowledge: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Ecology and an interdisciplinary task. For each task, a Creative Quotient (CQ) is calculated as a combination of Fluency (number of valid answers) and Flexibility (different approaches in the solution). The test also allows us to differentiate three scientific-creative thinking processes (hypothesis generation, hypothesis evaluation and evidence verification). 344 students from Compulsory Secondary Education took part in this study. The results point out a good reliability (α = .705) and an adequate inter-rater agreement (ranging from average ICC .80 to .98). In addition, the unifactorial structure of the test was verified using CFA, which agree with the authors' previous results (Ayas & Sak, 2014; Sak & Ayas, 2013), even when a structure of three creative process can be considered.