Motivational orientation and creativity

viii, 73 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm.The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of offering an extrinsic reward to Individuals who were Involved In creative writing. Two essential components of creative writing that were Investigated were the quality of creative writing, as assessed by two raters who were working In the domain of writing, and motivational orientation which was assessed mainly by a locus of control test. A class of creative writing students served as subjects. Complete data was obtained for 17 of them and partial data for three more. The motivational orientation of the class which served as subjects of the study was profl1ed according to the locus of control test (I/E Scale) and a Likert Scale that was created for this study. The results Indicated that the class profile was no different than a random group of subjects. The study explored the relationship between the creative quality of writing students produced and Intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Inter-rater reltabl1lty on the samples of student writing could not be established between the ratings of the two evaluators, so this question could not be answered. Exploratory methods were used to explore the data for discernible patterns, but none were found. The study attempted to Investigate the differential effects of offering a reward for writing on the subjects according to motivational orientation. The use of exploratory methods failed to provide any evidence for any differential effects. The conclusion of the study was that creativity was a difficult area to research, particularly using a quantitative approach. It was suggested that the study of creativ1ty and motivation be focused on established authors whose creative quality had been already established by their publ1catlon record. Then, by qualitative techniques such as Interviews, the motivational styles of some of these established writers could be explored In the search for patterns that could provide Information on the relationship between motivation and creativity