Towards Game-Based Assessment of Creative Thinking

TY - JOUR

T1 - Towards Game-Based Assessment of Creative Thinking

AU - Rafner, Janet Frances

AU - Wang, Qian Janice

AU - Gajdacz, Miroslav

AU - Badts, Thomas

AU - Baker, Brendan

AU - Bergenholtz, Carsten

AU - Biskjaer, Michael Mose

AU - Bui, Thomas

AU - Carugati, Andrea

AU - de Cibeins, Matthieu

AU - Noy, Lior

AU - Rahimi, Seyedahmad

AU - Tylén, Kristian

AU - Zana, Blanka

AU - Beaty, Roger

AU - Sherson, Jacob

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

PY - 2023/11

Y1 - 2023/11

N2 - For decades, researchers have struggled with measurement problems related to the construct validity of divergent and convergent thinking in creativity assessments. In response, some have called for battery-based approaches. Recently, digital games have emerged as a potential alternative, offering increased scalability and improved ecological validity. This article presents CREA: a new, scalable, game-based assessment suite. CREA includes crea.tiles and crea.blender, non-verbal games featuring both divergent and convergent thinking modes, as well as crea.ideas – the Alternative Uses Task, a standard test of divergent thinking, and crea.logic – a test of abstract reasoning. The novel convergent and divergent thinking game modes are constructed within the same contextual environment and with theoretically motivated differences in game-prompts to understand and generalize from the emerging elicited behaviors. In this study, 408 participants completed the CREA suite and selected validation measures, representing the largest game-based validation study to date. Both convergent and discriminant validity is demonstrated for crea.tiles with respect to standard tests, with correlations ranging from r = .1–.4. Having CREA freely accessible, we aim to broaden the accessibility of creativity assessment to researchers, educators, and the general public and through this scaleup validate the rich creative behavioral patterns observed in this study.

AB - For decades, researchers have struggled with measurement problems related to the construct validity of divergent and convergent thinking in creativity assessments. In response, some have called for battery-based approaches. Recently, digital games have emerged as a potential alternative, offering increased scalability and improved ecological validity. This article presents CREA: a new, scalable, game-based assessment suite. CREA includes crea.tiles and crea.blender, non-verbal games featuring both divergent and convergent thinking modes, as well as crea.ideas – the Alternative Uses Task, a standard test of divergent thinking, and crea.logic – a test of abstract reasoning. The novel convergent and divergent thinking game modes are constructed within the same contextual environment and with theoretically motivated differences in game-prompts to understand and generalize from the emerging elicited behaviors. In this study, 408 participants completed the CREA suite and selected validation measures, representing the largest game-based validation study to date. Both convergent and discriminant validity is demonstrated for crea.tiles with respect to standard tests, with correlations ranging from r = .1–.4. Having CREA freely accessible, we aim to broaden the accessibility of creativity assessment to researchers, educators, and the general public and through this scaleup validate the rich creative behavioral patterns observed in this study.

U2 - 10.1080/10400419.2023.2198845

DO - 10.1080/10400419.2023.2198845

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1040-0419

VL - 35

SP - 763

EP - 782

JO - Creativity Research Journal

JF - Creativity Research Journal

IS - 4

ER -