John Holt

Publication Date

11-1993

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Doris Redfield, Carl Martray, Daniel Roenker

Comments

Access granted to WKU students, faculty and staff only.

After an extensive unsuccessful search for the author, this thesis is considered an orphan work, which may be protected by copyright. The inclusion of this orphan work on TopScholar does not guarantee that that orphan work may be used for any purpose and any use of the orphan work may subject the user to a claim of copyright infringement. The reproduction of this work is made by WKU without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and is made for purposes of preservation and research.

See also WKU Archives - Authorization for Use of Thesis, Special Project & Dissertation

Degree Program

Department of Psychology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to provide supportive evidence for the construct validity of the Prose Quantification System (Tamme, 1982). The Prose Quantification System (PQS) is an instrument developed to predict teachers ratings of the creative quality of written prose. The study investigated four categories of information pertaining to construct validation: (a) convergent validity, (b) discriminant validity, (c) interiudge agreement and intrajudge stability, and (d) alternate form equivalence.

PQS story-starters (unfinished opening lines to a story) and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Verbal, Form A (TTCT) were administered to 141 fifth-grade students enrolled in six intact classes in two schools located in south central Kentucky. Each student received two story-starters about the same content (either box, string, or paper) but in different contexts (usual and unusual settings) and was asked to finish the stories. Thus, a total of 282 stories were collected. The stories were then (a) blindly rated by ten teachers according to the creativity level of the stories using a seven point Likert scale, (b) scored by judges trained in the use of the PQS, and (c) scored by raters trained in the use of the Carlson Scale for Measuring the Originality of Children's Stories (Carlson Scale).

Multiple regression analyses were used to investigate the relationships among the PQS and (a) teacher ratings of story creativity (TRSC), a convergent measure; (b) the TTCT, a discriminant measure; and the Carlson Scale, a discriminant measure. A stepwise procedure indicated that the TRSC accounted for a significant amount of PQS score variance. The TTCT was not identified as a significant predictor of PQS scores by the stepwise procedure although the zero order correlation between the TTCT and PQS total scores was significant. The Carlson Scale did account for a significant amount of PQS score variance.

Interrater agreement and intrarater stability were computed using an average correlation coefficient and percent agreement respectively. Results indicated that the PQS, used by trained judges, is reliable across judges and over specified periods of time.

Two 3 x 2 ANOVAs were used to demonstrate that neither PQS judges nor teachers allowed story-starter context or content to influence their scores and ratings. Results indicated a nonsignificant difference for context, but a significant main effect for content for both TRSC and PQS scores. Post-hoc analyses revealed stories about boxes and paper to be equivalent while stories about string similarly influenced both teachers' ratings and PQS judges' scores. Therefore, although story-starter content influences PQS scores, the PQS is an accurate predictor of TRSC.

Results of the study provided evidence in support of the construct validity of the PQS. Additional support may be provided by research which (a) reexamines alternate form equivalence of the PQS, (b) demonstrates that the PQS is internally consistent, (c) investigates the PQS's generalizability.

Disciplines

Creative Writing | Education | Psychology | School Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Download

Share

COinS