Measuring Creativity with Planned Missing Data

Abstract This paper introduces a method for the assessment of creativity that relies on creativity tasks, a subjective evaluation procedure, and a planned missing data design that offers a drastic reduction in the overall implementation costs (administration time and scoring procedure). This method was tested on a sample of 149 people, using three creativity tasks as a basis. Participants were instructed to produce several ideas in each task and then to select what they considered to be their best two ideas (i.e., “Top 2” procedure; Silvia, Winterstein, Willse, Barona, et al.,Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,2, 2008 and 68). These ideas were then evaluated by a panel of peers and experts. Creativity ratings were analyzed with structural equations; measurement models were estimated for each task and correlations between factor‐scores across the three tasks were investigated. Further insights regarding validity are provided through systematic investigation of the relationship between fluency scores, creativity ratings, intelligence tasks, self‐reported idea generation abilities, and creative activities and achievements. Overall, the results support the viability of this new approach, providing evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. They are discussed in relation to past research and avenues for further extension are proposed.