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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 2
(June, 2009) |
Torrance’s Creative Thinking Test
The test consists of two types. In this study, Figural Form A, as a type of the test, was used to measure the creative thinking skills of the participants. Another type of the test is the Verbal Form. The test includes three parts. Each part has a different activity sets which include picture drawing activities, picture drawing completion activities and the parallel line activities. The test measures the different aspects of creative thinking skills. These are fluency, originality, flexibility and elaboration. The determination of the score on each aspect was carried out by scoring the following criteria:
Fluency: total number of pictures completed.
Elaboration; how well the person is able to draw detailed pictures.
Flexibility: the number of pictures about the topic.
Originality: the number of the pictures drawn which are not imagined by others (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999:7).
In this study, Figural Form A was used with its sets of picture drawing, picture drawing completion and parallel line activities. The adopted subtests were composed of four aspects of the test (see Table 1). The appropriate time for the application of the test is 30 minutes. The Cronbach alpha reliability value of the test was found as .97. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients on test-retest reliability were calculated by Aksu (1988) and were determined in Table 1 (as citen in Korkmaz, 2002).
Table 1 Test-retest reliability values for the aspects of the test
Aspect of The Test
The Pearson Product-Moment
Correlation Coefficient
Fluency
0.62
Flexibility
0.68
Originality
0.43
Elaboration
0.34
Total
0.58
The test was considered as reliable instrument for the study
The logical thinking ability test (GALT) developed by Roadrangka, Yeany and Padilla (1982) and adapted by Korkmaz (202) was used in the study. The test includes 21 items and measures 6 logical processes. These processes are conservation, mass, length, volume, proportional comparison, controlling the variables, consolidative comparison, probabilistic comparison and relational comparison. The following table summarizes the number of items corresponding to each process.
Table 2 Logical processes in the test and corresponding item numbers
Process
The number of items
Conservation
1
Mass
1
Length
1
Volume
1
Proportional comparison
6
Controlling the variables
4
Consolidative comparison
3
Probabilistic comparison
2
Relational comparison
2
Total
21
In the test, participants are asked to answer each question and to write down their reasoning. According to past studies, the test was found to be appropriate for students at the 6th grade level and above. The time required for completion of the test is 45 minutes (Korkmaz, 2002). The alpha reliability of the test is 0.71. In the scoring process, one point is given to each true answer and satisfactory reason for the first 18 items, and one point is given to each true answer for the other questions.
