Perceptions of barriers to personal creativity: validation of an inventory involving high education students

The topic of creativity in higher education has been increasingly emphasized as support to the social and technological innovation. This study presents the adaptation and validation of the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity (Alencar, 1999) for Portuguese college students. The sample was composed by 582 students from a public university in Northern Portugal, whose ages ranged from 18 to 59 (M=23.41; SD=5.38), belonging to three main domains of graduation courses (Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences and Technologies). An exploratory factor analysis identified the four factors included in the original questionnaire: Inhibition/Shyness, Lack of Motivation, Lack of Time and Opportunities, and Social Repression. The psychometric properties of the instrument are adequate, concerning internal consistency reliability and structural validity, for items and the four dimensions. Some guidelines are provided in order to use this questionnaire in future researches to increase the levels of creativity in teaching and learning processes in higher education