This brief report finds significant differences in creativity levels between writers and college students, indicating SCAB's effectiveness in measuring creative engagement and cognitive style.
Creativity is a multidimensional construct influenced by personality, motivation, and engagement in creative activity. The Scale of Creative Attributes and Behavior (SCAB; Kelly, 2004) was developed to assess creativity across five components—creative engagement, creative cognitive style, spontaneity, tolerance, and fantasy. This brief report examined the criterion validity of the SCAB using a sample of professional writers (n = 83) and college students (n = 85). Analyses of covariance, controlling age, indicated that writers scored significantly higher on the SCAB total scale than students. Multivariate analysis revealed significant group differences for creative engagement, cognitive style, and fantasy, but not for spontaneity or tolerance. These findings provide further support for the SCAB as a valid measure of creative personality and behavior and suggest that real-world creative engagement is associated with higher self-reported creativity, particularly in domains requiring imaginative and cognitively flexible thought.
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Kathryn E. Kelly (2016) studied this question.
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