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The relationship between creativity and psychosocial development among college honors students and non-honors students

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in measures
of creativity and psychosocial development in college Honors and Non-Honors students
and also to determine interaction effects of demographic and academic background data.
Additionally, another purpose was to establish any relationship between measures of
creativity and psychosocial development. Of the 284 college students participating, 120
were honors students and 164 were non-honors students. Participants were administered
the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) Verbal Form B, Activities 4 and 5 and
the Student Development Task and Lifestyle Assessment (SDTLA). The TTCT included
scales of fluency, flexibility, originality, and average standard creativity score. The
SDTLA includes the measurement of three developmental tasks, ten subtasks, and two
scales. The participants were volunteers and were tested in four regularly scheduled
classes during the 2006 spring and summer semesters.
Two-tailed independent t-tests performed on the dependent variables of the
TTCT indicated that the Non-Honors student’s scores were statistically significantly higher on fluency, originality, and the average standard creativity measures. On the
average standard score, which is considered the best overall gauge of creative power,
neither Non-Honors nor Honors student groups TTCT scores were considered higher
than weak (0-16%) (Torrance, 1990). The results of the two-tailed independent t-tests
performed on the dependent variables of the SDTLA resulted in the statistically
significant higher development outcome scores in the Honors students. The mean
SDTLA scores of both the Honors and Non-Honors scores were not outside of norm
group average scores. The MANOVA data produced moderately statistically significant
interaction effects between classification level and fluency. However, the post hoc tests
did not confirm the difference in classification and fluency. Additional MANOVA data
indicated a significant interaction effect between ethnicity and Lifestyle Planning (LP),
and post hoc analysis confirmed the interaction with significant differences in Caucasian
and “Other” students. Classification level significantly interacted with eight of the
fourteen development outcomes, nevertheless the post hoc tests showed inconsistent
differences between classification groups within the developmental outcomes.
Correlations between the TTCT and SDTLA did not yield statistically significant
relationships between the creativity and psychosocial development variables.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2960
Date15 May 2009
CreatorsDupre' Casanova, Amy Elizabeth
ContributorsNash, William R.
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text
Formatelectronic, application/pdf, born digital

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