THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE IN RESEARCH INTO THE EFFECTS OF CREATIVITY SUPPORT SYSTEMS - QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF IDEAS

Creativity support systems (CSS) aim at enhancing the creativity of us ers. There is an emerging stream of research in which the effects of C SS on the creative output of respondents are measured. In this researc h, if is important to make a clear distinction between the dependent v ariable, creative output and the independent variable use of CSS. Furt hermore, the research design should take the potential effect of other factors on creative output into account, most notably, creative abili ty as a trait of the respondents. An experimental study on the value o f creativity support systems was recently reported in MIS Quarterly (M assetti 1996). That study yielded interesting insights with respect to the value of CSS. However, because of the methodology applied in anal yzing the data, the study underestimated the effects of CSS on the cre ative output of decision makers. In this note, Massetti's experiment i s positioned in the broader perspective of current research in the are a of CSS, and an alternative framework for analyzing the data is propo sed.