The Prediction of Creative Achievement from a Biographical Inventory

IN a recent review article, Freeberg (1967) summarized the literature dealing with the use of biographical information to pre-dict student achievement. Since biographical questionnaires seem to measure a wide variety of factors-both intellectual and non-intellectual, Freeberg concluded that they perform at their best and surpass other predictors when complex criteria are used, such as creative achievement. Although there have been numerous stud-ies concerned with the relationship of biographical data and aca-demic success in terms of grades (Asher and Grey, 1940; Myers, 1952; Schaefer, 1963), relatively few biographical studies (Anastasi and Schaefer, 1969; Schaefer and Anastasi, 1968) have focussed on the prediction of student creative achievement. The present study was designed to investigate the validity of a biographical inventory in combination with other instruments in the prediction of creative achievement at the high school level. The instruments selected for comparison purposes consisted of sev-eral of the more commonly used perceptual, personality, and achievement measures of creativity. Method-Subjects. The subjects were 800 male and female stu-dents from 10 high schools in the New York metropolitan area.2