This study investigated the validity of the Prose Quantification System (PQS) as a method of evaluating the creative quality of prose. PQS story- starters (opening story lines) and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were ad ministered to 141 fifth-grade students. Completed PQS stories were: (a) rated for creativity by 10 teachers and (b) scored by 9 raters trained to use the PQS and 4 raters trained to use the Carlson Scale for Measuring the Originality of Children's Stories. Stepwise multiple regression analysis in dicated that the Carlson Scale, PQS, and TTCT scores accounted for significant amounts of variance in teachers' creativity ratings. PQS in terrater agreement was .81; intrarater stability co efficients ranged from .84 to .94. Mixed factorial ANOVAs indicated two equivalent forms of the PQS.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Burnham, W.H. (1892). Individual differences in the imagination of childrenPedagogical Seminary, 2, 204-225.
2.
Campbell, A.J., & Willis, J. (1978). Modifying components of "creative behavior" in the natural environmentBehavior Modification , 2, 549-561.
3.
Carlson, R.K. (1968). Sparkling wordsBerkeley, CA : Wagner Printing.
4.
Dunkin, M.J., & Biddle, B.J. (1974). The study of teachingDallas : Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Frederiksen, C. (1975). Representing logical and semantic structure of knowledge acquired from discourseCognitive Psychology , 7, 371-458.
7.
Freedman, S.W., & Calfee, R.C. (1983). Holistic assessment of writing: Experimental design and cognitive theory In P. Mosenthal, L. Tamor, & S. A. Walmsley (Eds.), Research on teaching. New York: Longman.
Guilford, J.P. (1967). The nature of human intelligenceNew York: McGraw-Hill.
10.
Guilford, J.P. (1968). Intelligence, creativity, and their educational implicationsSan Diego, CA: Knapp.
11.
Kintsch, W. (1974). The representation of meaning in memoryHillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
12.
Lawhon, B. (1982, November). The relationship of selected cognitive and personalogical variables to creative behavior in sixth-grade studentsPaper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association, New Orleans.
13.
Lawton, D. (1968). Social class, language, and educationNew York: Shocken.
14.
Mandler, J.M., & Johnson, N.S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recallCognitive Psychology, 9, 111-151.
15.
McNemar, Q. (1979). Psychological statistics (5th ed.). New York: John Wiley.
16.
Meeker, M., & Meeker, R. (1979). S.O.I Learning Abilities Test: Examiners ManualEl Segundo, CA: S.O.I. Institute .
17.
Moslemi, M.H. (1975). The grading of creative writing essaysResearch in the Teaching of English, Fall, 154-161.
18.
Newell, A.J., Shaw, J.C., & Simon, H.A. (1962). The processes of creative thinking In H. E. Gruber, B. Terrell, & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Contemporary approaches to creative thinking.New York: Atherton Press.
19.
Redfield, D.L., & Martray, C.R. (1984, August). The Prose Quantification System: Development and construct validityPaper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto.
20.
Redfield, D.L., Steagall-Tamme, P., Martray, C.R., & Roenker, D.L. (1984). Prose Quantification SystemJournal of Human Behavior and Learning, 1, 28-34.
21.
Redfield, D.L., Steagall-Tamme, P., Martray, C.R., & Roenker, D.L. (1985). Creativity in expressive language: The development of a scoring system (Abstract)Journal of Creative Behavior , 19, 141, 144.
22.
Rumelhart, D.E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories In D. G. Bobrow & A. Collins (Eds.), Representations and understandings.New York: Academic Press .
Spearman, C. (1930). Creative mindLondon: Cambridge University Press.
25.
Stein, N.L., & Glenn, C.G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children In R. Freedle (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing (Vol. 2). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
26.
Tamor, L., & Bond, J.T. (1983). Text analysis: Inferring process from product In P. Mosenthal, L. Tamor, & S. A. Walmsey (Eds.), Research on writing.New York: Longman.
27.
Thorndyke, P.W. (1977). Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourseCognitive Psychology , 9, 77-110.
Torrance, E.P. (1972). Predictive validity of the Torrance Tests of Creative ThinkingJournal of Creative Behavior , 6, 236-252.
30.
Torrance, E.P. (1974). Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Norms-Technical ManualLexington, MA: Ginn.
31.
Werner, H. (1957). Comparative psychology of mental developmentNew York: International Universities Press.
32.
Yamamoto, K. (1965). Effects of restriction of range and test unreliability on correlations between measures of intelligence and creative thinkingBritish Journal of Educational Psychology, 30, 300-305.
