Measures of Creativity in Sound and Music (MCSM)
Unpublished Testing Instrument
Author: Dr. Cecilia Wang
School
of Music
University
of Kentucky
Lexington,
KY 40506-0022
Email:
cecilia@uky.edu
This test is designed to
measure the Fluency and Imagination factors of Divergent Thinking skills of
lower-elementary grade children. It is modeled after Torrance’ Thinking
Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM). As in TCAM, it is administered to the
child individually and it also has four activities. This test takes about 20-30 minutes to administer and it
requires the child to respond by making sound/music and movement. The test yields scores in Fluency
(Activities 1 and 3) and Imagination (Activities 2 and 4) measures, with
inter-judge reliability coefficients of .99, .72, .99, .96 respectively for the
four Activities; and .99 for Fluency and .90 for Imagination. The inter-item
consistency was found to be .87, .83, .87, and .92 for the four Activities
respectively; and .51 for Fluency (Activities 1 and 3), and .54 for Imagination
(Activities 2 and 4). Concurrent validity between MCSM and ratings of student
creativity by the music teacher was .43 for Fluency and .14 for Imagination
(Balzer, 1988). The significant level of .01 was used for the above data, from
32 second graders.
Given the high
reliability and established measures in divergent thinking, this test can be
useful for teachers wishing to compare the creativity thinking skills among
his/her students. It is also useful for researchers who are interested in using
this instrument as a dependent variable for baseline measures, and/or for
instructional outcomes in creative thinking. The test may be suitable to use for children ages 4-8, with
no or little musical instruction, however, more testing and data are still
needed to provide usable norms. Special attention should be given to factors
that could affect the test scores; these factors include environment or
atmosphere for the testing, and background and maturation of the children
Research using this test
included:
Wang, C. (1985). Measures
of creativity in sound and music.
Unpublished manuscript.
Wang, C. & Kageff, L.
(1985). Effects of two modes of teaching on musical creativity of second
graders. Presentation at the Southern Division Music Educators National
Conference at Mobile, Alabama, March 27-30.
Link to Wang & Kageff
Abstract
Test validation:
Balzer, S (1988). A validation study of a measure of
musical creativity. Journal of Research in Music Education, 36, 232-249.