Social Validation of a Creativity Measure

A series of three rating forms, based on the Developmental-Ecological Model of Creative Potential in Young Children (Moran, Sawyers & Tegano, 1987), and a checklist were designed to assist preschool teachers in identifying creative children. The rating forms and checklist were completed, one per day for four consecutive days, by 15 teachers who were unaware that they were rating creative behaviors. The Multidimensional Stimulus Fluency Measure (MSFM), measure of young children's creative potential, and an IQ test were individually administered to the 40 children involved. Correlations were computed to assess the relationships of IQ and creativity, as measured by the MSFM, to the rating forms. Both the MSFM and the rating forms were internally consistent. Thirteen items out of 59 displayed strong internal consistency and were significantly correlated with original scores but not with IQ scores. Only 5 of the 59 items correlated significantly with IQ. This may be related to the design of the study or to poor wording of the items. It is concluded that the teacher rating forms may provide additional information, related to personality, cognition and context, to teachers in the identification of creative potential in young children.