The Gold Standard for Assessing Creativity

Abstract

The most widely used creativity assessments are divergent thinking tests, but these and other popular creativity measures have been shown to have little validity. The Consensual Assessment Technique is a powerful tool used by creativity researchers in which panels of expert judges are asked to rate the creativity of creative products such as stories, collages, poems, and other artifacts. The Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the idea that the best measure of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, a research proposal, or any other artifact is the combined assessment of experts in that field. Unlike other measures of creativity, the Consensual Assessment Technique is not based on any particular theory of creativity, which means that its validity (which has been well established empirically) is not dependent upon the validity of any particular theory of creativity. The Consensual Assessment Technique has been deemed the “gold standard” in creativity research and can be very useful in creativity assessment in higher education.