Quantitative Research on Creativity

Our book chapter titled "Quantitative Research on Creativity" was recently published in the book "Researching Creative Learning" edited by Pat Thomson, and Julian Sefton-Green. As the name implies, it is a summary of quantitative research traditions in creativity with some examples for each. I believe that the following paragraph would give a glimpse of it.





SUMMARY
Runco, M. A., Cayirdag, N., & Acar, S. (2010). Quantitative research on creativity. In J. Sefton-Green, P. Thomson, Eds. Researching Creative Learning: Methods and Issues. Routledge.


This chapter was prepared for individuals who are interested in creativity but whose expertise is not in testing or measurement. It focuses on studies of creativity that have used quantitative methods and data. It does not, then, discuss qualitative research. Although there is some psychometric jargon, each term is defined and illustrations are provided. The coverage was dictated by several related questions. Why is the quantitative approach suitable for studies of creativity? Of the various available quantitative methods, which are the most useful for creative studies, and which facets of creativity can be meaningfully studied with these methods? What issues and controversies are related to the quantitative approach to the study of creativity?Finally, what are the limitations of the various quantitative methods when studying creativity?

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as Predictors of Personal and Public Achievement: A Fifty Year Follow-up.

The most recent longitudinal study on the predictive validity of TTCT. Honored to be part of it...

ABSTRACT
Runco, M. A., Millar, G., Acar, S. & Cramond, B.  (2010). Torrance tests of creative thinking as predictors of personal and public achievement: A fifty year follow-up.  Creativity Research Journal. 22(4), 361–368.

This article presents the results of the 50-year follow-up of the longitudinal study E. Paul Torrance initiated 5 decades ago. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was administered in the late 1950s and personal and public achievement data were obtained 50 years later and used as criteria in analyses reported here. These showed that TTCT scores were moderately correlated with personal, but not with public, achievement. However, an interaction of intelligence and creativity was significantly related to public achievement but not to personal achievement. When a composite was formed from the 4 TTCT indexes (fluency, originality, flexibility, and elaboration), a significant quadratic trend was found with the personal achievement criterion. Three of the indicators (‘‘Love of work’’, Tolerance of mistakes, and Minority of one) from the Beyonder instrument developed by Torrance (2003) were related to public achievement. Only one other indicator from the Beyonder measure (‘‘Well-roundedness’’) was associated with personal achievement. Men were significantly higher in public achievement than women, but there was no significant gender difference in personal achievement.

Do Tests of Divergent Thinking Have an Experiential Bias?

Selcuk Acar's first article published in English. It was a true research experience...

ABSTRACT 
Runco, M. A. & Acar, S. (2010). Do tests of divergent thinking have an experiential bias? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. 4(3), 144-148.

Divergent thinking (DT) tests are widely used as an estimate of creativity. However, tests of DT may be biased by experience. Scores from these tests may depend on the amount and types of experiences of examinees. This investigation was designed to determine the degree to which personal and social experiences influence DT scores. Two different tasks were administered: Uses task and Problem Generation (PG). Fluency and originality scores were calculated for each. Analyses indicated that the impact of experiences was similar in the PG and Uses tasks. Personal and social experience explained 44% and 30% of fluency scores for PG and Uses tasks respectively, and 65% of originality scores for both PG and Uses. The differences between uncorrected scores (all ideas, including those reflecting experience) and corrected scores (where ideas tied to personal or social experiences were eliminated) were statistically significant, with a largest discrepancy in Uses fluency and lowest in Uses originality. Findings supported the claim that divergent thinking tests may depend heavily on experience. Alternatives for using DT tests without an experiential bias are discussed.

Creativity in the Movies

NAGC has never been closer to us than one in this year. Atlanta was just next door compared to St. Louis and Vancouver. This time we switched to the topic of creativity. That will be what we will focus on more, I believe. Here is the summary and results of our study:


SUMMARY

The research on creativity using movies mostly examined the cinematic quality and cinematic creativity. However, the way creativity is defined in the movies is ignored in the literature. Highly creative characters in the movies both affect the perception of creativity among lay people and how they define and understand creativity. Movies including character(s) with high creativity also offer opportunities to creativity researchers to examine common debates of the field from a different perspective. In this study, implicit definitions of creativity in the movies were examined. This study presents an empirical perspective to teachers and researchers about the creativity in fiction.

The study included seventeen movies in four different domains: music, writing, science & technology, and social & educational. The comparison of the movies based on fictional characters and true stories indicated that, true stories reflect a better picture of creative individuals when the explicit (scientifically recognized or used) theories of creativity is considered, even though this difference was not significant. The true stories have higher positive creative characteristics than the fictional movies which had higher negative characteristics.  Therefore, the implicit theories in the movies differed more in the fictional movies than the true stories. Comparisons across domains indicated that positive characters are almost same, but negative characteristics differ.

Leadership Skills of Gifted Students from Different Educational Environments

This time, we were in St. Louise, the gateway to the west. Again, it was an empirical work based on the M.A. thesis, actually a slice of it. So, even though you would see some on family variables, it is more about comparisons of the students from different classroom environments.

SUMMARY

This is a comparative study of the three environmental settings in terms of the perceived leadership skills of gifted students. The first group of participants is those who receive differentiated education in semi-homogenous classes while the second is made up of those who merely participate in enrichment activities outside of the school without any grouping in their regular classrooms. The third group is those who received no special education, in-school activity, or enrichment. Some socio-economic variables such as number of siblings and educational level of the parents were taken into consideration. The results are discussed with the related literature.

A Turkish Family Profile of Children with Giftedness in Leadership

18th World Conference on Gifted & Talented Children was held in Vancouver, Canada between 3-7 August, 2009. This was my first participation and I found Vancouver so beautiful. However, I was surprised by the fact that fewer people than I expected attended to the conference. Although this conference was not as large as NAGC (even though the latter is organized every year) one can see gifted researchers from every corner of the globe.

As a Turkish couple, it was surprising for us to see a lot of researchers and educators from Turkey where I got my M.A. degree. This is promising for the education of gifted and creative people in Turkey because this has been considered as luxury rather than need in there. Namely, Ankara Bilsem and scholars from Istanbul University were some of them.

Below, you will see the abstract of my research about family profiles of the children with giftedness in leadership in the context of Turkey.

SUMMARY

This research aims to reveal family environments of gifted children in leadership. Based on a new definition of giftedness in leadership, the top 10% to 20% of the children in Raven SPM Plus group intelligence test and Roets Rating Scale for Leadership were analyzed. The variables for the analysis consisted of the mother’s and father’s level of education, number of siblings, and birth order. The results showed that gifted children in leadership tend to have highly educated parents who, mostly, have more than one child. They also tend to be first-born children. The results were analyzed with the support of related literature.