CHAPTER VIII Development and Application of Tests of Creativity*

IXESEARCH KNOWLEDGE about creativity is scanty. Some of the best research projects are large ones not yet published or still in process. Until a few-years ago, the complexities of creativity discouraged research studies in this area. Recently, increased research activities in creativity, in which the subjects have most often been scientists, have been exploratory in nature; several have been very provocative. Many of the researchers have focused on understanding the nature of creativity and of the creative person, rather than hurriedly trying to build a creativity test to market for wide-spread use; consequently, a great variety of characteristics has been stud-ied by means of several types of measuring instruments. Research has sometimes focused on a characteristic, such as independence, which has been measured by several separate devices; in other instances it has focused on possible measures of creative potential—for example, on high-level aptitude-type tests as opposed to personality or motivation-type tests. Much of the research reported was directed toward finding concomitan