Finding Creativity on IQ Tests

07/17/2011 05:55 pm ET | Updated Sep 16, 2011


There are lots of reasons why a student may be referred to a school psychologist. Perhaps the student is demonstrating a particular learning disability. Perhaps the student appears right for gifted education. When a student is referred to a school psychologist, the clinician may decide to administer an IQ test to determine the student's pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Whatever the reason for the referral, there is good reason to assess creativity. Creativity is a crucial skill for success and greatness in life, and is often missed just by looking at an individual's global IQ score (which takes the average performance across different subtests).

When administering an IQ test, it's crucial that the psychologist adopt the intelligent testing approach. Coined by Alan S. Kaufman, intelligent testing involves a focus on the person being tested, and how that individual responds, or why that individual responds in a certain manner, in addition to how well they respond. The psychologist can help the child or adult being evaluated by observing and interpreting a wide range of behaviors, making inferences about observed problem-solving strategies, and interpreting the test profile within the context of pertinent background information about the person, clinical behaviors observed during the evaluation, and the latest theories and research in the field of cognitive science and learning theory. The entire assessment process should be viewed as an experiment conducted with a sample size of one person. Such testing requires a knowledgeable researcher, and test results are meaningless until the individual's scores are put into context by the examiner.


In extracting information about creativity from performance on an IQ test, these principles are of the utmost of importance. So what can clinicians do when a referral question requires them to find evidence of a person's creative potential from a comprehensive assessment? I teamed up with Alan Kaufman's son James C. Kaufman (who is a superstar in the creativity field) and Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger (a leading assessment specialist) to explore just this question (download full paper here). We believe that a test administrator can use the intelligent testing philosophy to find evidence of creativity within the administered IQ subtests. In particular, we make a few recommendations of how to make use of the already existing individually administered cognitive and achievement batteries to extract information about an individual's creative potential.



Behavioral observations. The test administrator should be an astute observer of an individual's problem-solving styles and strategies during assessment. The psychologist should gather information about how and why the person responds in a particular way to items. Does an individual try out many different strategies when solving the same type of problem? Does the individual use a trial-and-error problem solving approach? Does the individual use an organized, systematic problem-solving approach? Does the individual elaborate on responses without prompting? Does the individual get frustrated when a task has a forced response that doesn't allow the individual a chance to be original? Does the individual show signs that he or she prefers less structured tasks? Does the individual respond impulsively? It's important for the test administrator to pay attention to the individual.

Test interpretation. High scores don't necessarily mean high creativity. Each of the subtest scores must be interpreted in the context of the examinee's referral question, background, observed behaviors, and other test results. It must also be kept in mind that actual creative achievement requires not only the ability to produce divergent ideas but also the ability to discern which of the ideas are appropriate to a relevant goal. Knowledge of an individual's unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses can be combined with other information about the person, including their global scores, to make a sensible recommendation that has a focus on improving one's performance, not holding them back.



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