Creative Thinking Profile Inventory

Abstract

The Creative Thinking Profile Inventory (CTPI), developed by Cromwell, Haase, and Vladova in 2023, is a concise, 15-item psychological instrument designed to quantify individual preferences for three distinct Creative Thinking Styles: Divergent Thinking, Bricoleurgent Thinking, and Emergent Thinking. Rooted in theories of cognitive styles, the CTPI aims to assess the preferred methods individuals employ when generating ideas that are both novel and useful during complex problem-solving scenarios.

The inventory’s development involved a rigorous literature review and validation against prior creativity measures. Initial validation studies, conducted on an online sample of adult participants, provided strong empirical evidence supporting the scale’s proposed three-factor structure, as well as robust internal Reliability and predictive Validity metrics.

Keywords

Bricoleurgent Thinking, Creative Thinking Styles, Divergent Thinking, Emergent Thinking, Idea Generation, Cognitive Styles, Problem Solving, Creative Self-Efficacy, Intrinsic Motivation

Authors

Cromwell, Johnathan R., Haase, Jennifer, Vladova, Gergana

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Creative Thinking Profile Inventory is to provide a nuanced measure of how individuals prefer to approach the creative process. By differentiating between three distinct creative styles—Divergent, Bricoleurgent, and Emergent—the instrument moves beyond measuring mere creative output to assess the underlying cognitive preferences that drive the generation of novel and useful ideas, particularly in the context of problem-solving.

This measurement allows researchers and practitioners to understand how different task structures might favor one creative style over another, thereby potentially optimizing team composition or task assignment based on individual preference profiles.

Construct

The CTPI measures the overarching construct of preferred Creative Thinking Styles, which are defined by three specific subscales:

• Divergent Thinking: This style reflects the preference for generating numerous unique ideas and exploring a wide range of possibilities, often associated with brainstorming and expansive ideation.

• Bricoleurgent Thinking: This style captures the preference for rapidly combining existing resources or knowledge (bricolage) under pressure (urgent) to form novel solutions, often characterized by resourcefulness and quick adaptation.

• Emergent Thinking: This style relates to the preference for allowing solutions to unfold or emerge organically through iterative experimentation and reflection, often without a predefined endpoint.

Validity

The validation process provided substantial evidence supporting the instrument’s utility across multiple forms of Validity, ensuring the scale measures what it intends to measure and predicts relevant outcomes.

• Convergent Validity: The Divergent Thinking subscale showed strong, positive, and significant correlations (ranging from 0.41 to 0.73, p < .001) with theoretically related constructs, including intrinsic motivation orientation, creative self-efficacy, creative personal identity, growth mindset, and social risk-taking. Conversely, it demonstrated expected negative and significant correlations (ranging from 0.18 to 0.26, p < .001) with constructs such as need for structure and fixed mindset. Results for Bricoleurgent Thinking were highly consistent with those for Divergent Thinking, while Emergent Thinking demonstrated a distinct correlation pattern, suggesting it measures a unique aspect of creativity preference.

• Predictive Validity: The authors established that each of the three creative styles possessed distinct predictive power. Specifically, the dominance of a particular style was found to be predictive of overall enjoyment, engagement, and measured creativity, depending on the specific underlying structure and demands of the task being performed.

Reliability

The CTPI demonstrated strong evidence of consistency across its subscales, establishing high internal Reliability.

• Internal Consistency: The internal consistency of the constructs was determined using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. Both Divergent Thinking and Bricoleurgent Thinking showed excellent reliability, achieving coefficients of α=0.91. The Emergent Thinking subscale also demonstrated strong consistency, with a coefficient of α=0.80. These values confirm that the items within each subscale reliably measure the same underlying construct.

Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were employed to validate the dimensional structure of the 15-item inventory.

• Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): The EFA successfully extracted three distinct factors, aligning with the hypothesized structure. These factors accounted for 19%, 12%, and 9% of the total variance, respectively.

• Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): The CFA results strongly supported the theoretical three-factor model, indicating a robust statistical fit with the collected data. Key fit indices were reported as χ2 =218.35, df =87, χ2/df =2.51, CFI =0.955, RMSEA =0.069, and SRMR =0.063 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Importantly, comparative analyses showed that alternative models, specifically one-factor and two-factor models (which combined divergent and emergent thinking), provided significantly poorer fits than the established three-factor structure.

Instrument

Test Type: Original

Format: The items utilize a 7-point Likert-type rating scale, anchored by 1 = Not at all, 2 = Very little, 3 = A little, 4 = Moderately, 5 = Much, 6 = Very much, and 7 = An extreme amount.

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male and Female)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years & older)

Population Details: Respondents consisted of an online sample of adult participants.

Test Methodology: Test Validity, Convergent Validity, Predictive Validity, Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Bricoleurgent Thinking, Creative Thinking Styles, Divergent Thinking, Emergent Thinking, Idea Generation, Problem Solving, Psychometric Scale, Factor Analysis

Authors

• Johnathan R. Cromwell

  • Affiliation: University of San Francisco, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, and International Business

  • Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

  • Correspondence Address: [email protected]

  • Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

• Jennifer Haase

  • Affiliation: Weizenbaum Institute

  • Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available

  • Correspondence Address: No data is Available

  • Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

• Gergana Vladova

  • Affiliation: Weizenbaum Institute

  • Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available

  • Correspondence Address: No data is Available

  • Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Permissions: May use for Research/Teaching

• Fee: No

• Commercial: No

• Test Year: 2023

References

Cromwell, J. R., Haase, J., & Vladova, G. (2023). The creative thinking profile: Predicting intrinsic motivation based on preferences for different creative thinking styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 208, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112205

Items of the Creative Thinking Profile Inventory

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

No data is Available