Extension of the Consensual Assessment Technique to Nonparallel Creative Products

ABSTRACT: The consensual technique for assessing creativity is widely used in research, but its validation has been limited to assessing the creativity of artifacts produced under tightly constrained experimental con-ditions. Typically, only artifacts produced in response to very similar instructions have been compared. This has allowed researchers to compare such things as the effects of different motivational conditions on creative performance, but it has not allowed many other kinds of comparisons. It has also limited the use of the technique to artifacts gathered for specific experimental pur-poses, as opposed to already-existing artifacts pro-duced under less controlled conditions. For this study, samples of writings collected by the National Assess-ment of Educational Progress that were written in re-