TDC – Baer (Lecture 3)
Assessing Creativity Using the Consensual Assessment Technique
so far creativity assessment mainly focuses on trivial aspects of creativity and tends to lack
validity and reliability → difficult to assess
Consensual Assessment Technique → can be used to assess creativity in any field (e.g. judge
creativity of students research designs/theories in science; judge their artistic creations and
musical compositions; judge poems, stories and essays) → potential for assessing creativity
in higher education setting
Background
there is no test to determine which historian’s theories, which biochemist’s models, or which
screenwriter’s movies are the most creative → instead experts get asked of their opinion (i.e.
collective judgment of recognized experts in that field)
Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the rather simple idea that the best measure
of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, or any other artifact is the combined assessment
of experts in that field, however, it focuses on judging creativity of more everyday creations
(instead of Nobel Price in mathematics)
creativity assessment is difficult: domain specificity vs. domain generality → two different
views, therefore, the validity of creativity assessment is tied to the validity of particular
models of creativity
◦ Consensual Assessment Technique is not tied to particular theory of creativity → works
equally well independent of domain specificity or domain generality
→ based on actual creative performances or artifacts and it mimics the way creativity is
assessed in the “real world”
→ limitations: relies on comparisons of levels of creativity within a particular group, and
it is therefore not possible to create any kind of standardized scoring using Consensual
Assessment Technique ratings that might allow comparisons to be made across settings
Procedure For Using The Consensual Assessment Technique
The basic technique:
1. Subjects are asked to create something (e.g. a poem, a short story, a collage, a composition an
experimental design)
2. Experts in the domain in question are the asked to evaluate the creativity of the thing they have
made
not measure some skill, attribute, or disposition that is theoretically linked to creativity;
instead, it is the actual creativity of things that subjects have produced that is assessed
→ focus on creative products, not creativity-relevant talents or attributes that are
hypothesized to influence creativity
procedure: all subjects are given same instructions and materials for creating some kind of
product, than experts independently assess creativity of creations (e.g. students received line
drawing of girl and boy and were asked to write a story in which both played a part)
◦ experts use a rating system from 1-5 and do not have to explain their rating
◦ experts are asked to use the full scale to reach a comparative creativity of things being
judged → might lead to different ratings of the same product in two different groups
Validity And Reliability
no more objective or valid measure of the creativity of a work of art than the collective
judgments of artists and art critics (experts)
Assessing Creativity Using the Consensual Assessment Technique
so far creativity assessment mainly focuses on trivial aspects of creativity and tends to lack
validity and reliability → difficult to assess
Consensual Assessment Technique → can be used to assess creativity in any field (e.g. judge
creativity of students research designs/theories in science; judge their artistic creations and
musical compositions; judge poems, stories and essays) → potential for assessing creativity
in higher education setting
Background
there is no test to determine which historian’s theories, which biochemist’s models, or which
screenwriter’s movies are the most creative → instead experts get asked of their opinion (i.e.
collective judgment of recognized experts in that field)
Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the rather simple idea that the best measure
of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, or any other artifact is the combined assessment
of experts in that field, however, it focuses on judging creativity of more everyday creations
(instead of Nobel Price in mathematics)
creativity assessment is difficult: domain specificity vs. domain generality → two different
views, therefore, the validity of creativity assessment is tied to the validity of particular
models of creativity
◦ Consensual Assessment Technique is not tied to particular theory of creativity → works
equally well independent of domain specificity or domain generality
→ based on actual creative performances or artifacts and it mimics the way creativity is
assessed in the “real world”
→ limitations: relies on comparisons of levels of creativity within a particular group, and
it is therefore not possible to create any kind of standardized scoring using Consensual
Assessment Technique ratings that might allow comparisons to be made across settings
Procedure For Using The Consensual Assessment Technique
The basic technique:
1. Subjects are asked to create something (e.g. a poem, a short story, a collage, a composition an
experimental design)
2. Experts in the domain in question are the asked to evaluate the creativity of the thing they have
made
not measure some skill, attribute, or disposition that is theoretically linked to creativity;
instead, it is the actual creativity of things that subjects have produced that is assessed
→ focus on creative products, not creativity-relevant talents or attributes that are
hypothesized to influence creativity
procedure: all subjects are given same instructions and materials for creating some kind of
product, than experts independently assess creativity of creations (e.g. students received line
drawing of girl and boy and were asked to write a story in which both played a part)
◦ experts use a rating system from 1-5 and do not have to explain their rating
◦ experts are asked to use the full scale to reach a comparative creativity of things being
judged → might lead to different ratings of the same product in two different groups
Validity And Reliability
no more objective or valid measure of the creativity of a work of art than the collective
judgments of artists and art critics (experts)
