Student's Self Report: What Metric?

On July 27th, 2009 Lisa Mills and Randy Finch met with Eric Main to discuss our research.

One of the key problems we discussed was the measurement of student response.

We are still engaged in the process of defining our research question and what exercise we will use for our research. But we are also asking what measures to use. Randy has a bias in favor of "indirect" measures, because issues of bias and subjectivity can be finessed. Consequently, Randy is inclined to use the 3 Question ("indirect") self report of creativity from Beghetto in 2006?

I am good at coming up with new ideas?
I have a lot of good ideas?
I have a good imagination?

Or should be use the self-efficacy questions posed originally by Bandura?

We could add our own questions to these (social-constructivist) instruments, that focus more on the individual.

Here is a review of how the Research Questions could be applied:

a) Students would self-report (i.e., answer the 3 above questions or the Bandura questions). The design of our research would be to have students self-report before and after the exercise.
b) Th next level of questions might be more objective but still in the nature of self-report: e.g., Are you able to find the COP of an existing work (before and after the exercise)? We could also examine what language the subjects use to describe the COP and the process of synthesizing the COP?
c) Students then could look at their before and after tests and compare their ability. In other words, students could write a narrative about their ability to distinguish theme before and after an exercise.
d) Can we add direct measures?
e.g., Test their ability to exclude something that doesn't belong (a scene that doesn't belong per the COP). If employing such measures injects too much subjectivity, could we measure the student's ability to apply COP? Even if the result itself isn't measured, we could ask the students to engage in the process of finding a COP and see HOW the students beahve. (e.g., Ask the students to create a meaning out of disparate elements. Then the measure would be whether they have a strategy for creating meaningful relationships between scenes, even if only meaningful TO THEM.)

Can we gather additional information which might not be a part of our central research question but could (later?) be analyzed?

For example: Can we track an exercise over time? It's tough to follow our students for a period of years. But could we follow our students over a year? It would be great to track students asking: "If you report enhanced creativity, when did the lightbulb finally go off?" On a related front: Should we ask the students to retrospectively think about creativity? "Before this exercise helped you to become creative?"

Should we try to separate out extrinsic sources of creativity (e.g., positive audience reaction) versus intrinsic sources (e.g., The statement of premise has meaning for me.).

How do we measure a student's self-report. What are we going to do to account for differences in self awareness? Is it enough to obtain a report of their intention? What about their self-report of confidence about being creative in the future?

How do these questions compare to asking for a student's report of what the audience experience will be?

Can we (indirectly) ask about their world view? (e.g., Who are your role models? What do you care about?) And can we track changes in these conceptual touchstones?

Are the student's prepared to risk more?

Beghetto, R. Creative Self-Efficacy: Correlates in Middle And Secondary Students, Creativity Research Journal, Vol 18, No. 4, 447-457, 2006.