PROCESS-BASED MEASURES OF CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS .1. PROBLEMCONSTRUCTION

Many students of creativity have argued that certain cognitive process ing skills are required for successful performance on the kind of comp lex, novel problems confronting creative people. In this study, a meas ure was developed to assess problem construction skills. This measure, based on a model of the problem construction process proposed by Mumf ord, Reiter-Palmon, and Redmond (1994), presented multiple alternative problem definitions that varied with respect to content, quality, and originality. When scores on this measure were related to performance on a series of creative problem-solving tasks, multiple correlations i n the mid 30s were obtained. Further, it was found that the tendency t o define problems using high-quality procedures and restrictions added to the variance explained by the standard measures of ability and div ergent thinking skills. The implications of these findings for assessi ng processing skills are discussed as well as their implications for u nderstanding the problem construction process.