Is What You See What You Really Get? Comparison of Scoring Techniques in the Assessment of Real-World Divergent Thinking

Abstract

In recent years, the social sciences have seen a resurgence in the study of divergent thinking (DT) measures. However, many of these recent advances have focused on abstract, decontextualized DT tasks (e.g., list as many things as you can think of that have wheels). This study provides a new perspective by exploring the reliability and validity evidence for several methods for scoring real-world DT tasks (i.e., tasks situated within a real-world problem or situation). The results suggest a combination of objective and subjective scoring methods may be optimal for originality scoring for contextualized DT tasks, which stands in contrast to recent research suggesting the objective, percentage scoring technique may be optimal for scoring originality on abstract tasks.