E. PAUL TORRANCE NICHOLAS C. ALIOTTI

Sex Differences in Levels of Performance and Test-Retest Reliability on the Torrance Tests

of Creative Thinking Ability*

In the process of developing the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the senior author has rarely reported the sex differ- ences in creative functioning that have occurred. In general, however, his associates and he have found few sex differences below the fourth grade in samples drawn from various places in the United States. After the fourth grade, however, girls have usually excelled boys on all verbal tests and on elaboration in figural tests. Boys, however, have generally excelled girls on figural originality. Rather typical is the finding of Yama- mot0 (1962) on the Ask Questions Test. On this verbal test, girls excelled boys at all grade levels from one through twelve, except in the second, third, and fourth. This is in line with other evidence (Torrance, 1963) that boys are very aware of their sex identification in the first grade but not during the latency period of the second, third, and early fourth grades. Fifth grade children, however, are extremely sensitive about their sex identification, and their reponses to the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and to classroom experiments are clearly influenced by it.

Numerous scholars have continued to question whether these sex differences result from biological or socio-cultural influences. Raina’s study showing the general superiority of boys over girls, even in verbal tests, among children in India

*The study by M. K. Raina referred to in this article will be presented in one of the forthcoming issues of J.C.B.

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The Journal of Creative Behavior

adds to the weight of evidence in support of the importance of socio-cultural influences. Raina’s results are strongly supported by those obtained by Prakash (1966) in a study of creative development in Delhi, India. He found few differences be- tween boys and girls in the first and second grades, but obtained rather consistent and significant differences on both the verbal and figural tests from the third grade through the sixth. It is interesting that the results obtained in two different areas of India (Ajmer and Delhi) are consistent, as are those obtained by the senior author and his associates from various parts of the United States. Since the Indian culture seems to place emphasis on language skills and on male superiority, perhaps even more so than in the United States, it is not sur- prising that boys in Ajmer and Delhi surpass girls on the verbal tests of creative thinking after grade two.

In the study reported in this paper, the authors propose to offer a carefully developed set of data to investigate sex differ- ences on both forms of the Torrance Tests of Creative Think- ing (1966 a,b) in terms of both levels of functioning and stability. The subjects of this study were 59 girls and 59 boys drawn from a larger population of fifth grade pupils in three rural counties in Wisconsin. The fifth grade level was chosen since there is general consensus that sex identifications emerge rather strongly at this point and would be expected to produce differences in creative functioning, if sex identification and differential treatment of the sexes do, in fact, produce sex differences in creative functioning. The subjects had been administered both forms of the figural and verbal batteries of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The two forms had been administered one week apart. Responses were scored for Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration according to the published scoring guides for the tests and converted to standard or T-scores (Torrance, 1966b). The means, standard deviations, and, f-ratios for Figural and Verbal Forms A are presented in Table 1 and the results for Figural and Verbal Forms B are shown in Table 2.

Perhaps the most striking result observed in Tables 1 and 2 is that girls excel boys on all of the verbal tests in both Forms A and B at rather high levels of confidence. On the figural tests, the boys excel the girls on Flexibility and Originality but the girls surpass the boys on Elaboration. The results are quite consistent from Form A to Form B.

A value of 1 was assigned to males and a value of 0 to females and biserial correlations run. The results obtained are

PROCEDURES

RESULTS

53

Sex Differences In Levels of Performance and Test-Retest Rollablllty

TABLE 1 Means, Standard Deviations, and t-Ratios of Differences in Means for Male and Female Fifth Grade Pupils on Form A

of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

Males (N=59) Females (N=59) Level of Measure Means S.D. Means S.D. t-Ratios Signif.

Fig. Fluency Fig. FIexibiIity Fig. Originality Fig. Elaboration Fig. Total Verb. Fluency Verb. Flexibility Verb. Originality Verb. Total

50.33 11.38 50.31 11.42 55.37 13.43 47.37 8.29 203.56 33.25 48.13 11.57 49.23 10.60 51.10 10.70 148.23 30.13

49.33 47.52 51.12 53.03 201.00 55.73 55.13 56.88 167.28

8.56 9.37 9.60 8.60 25.80 12.39 11.38 14.26 34.89

0.7609 2.0527 2.7897 5.1509 0.6602 4.9058 4.1171 3.5235 4.4904

ns <.os <.Ol <.OOl ns <.a1 <.Ol <.Ol <.Ol

TABLE 2 Means, Standard Deviations, and t-Ratios of Differences in Means for Male and Female Fifth Grade Pupils on Form B

of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

Measure

Fig. Fluency Fig. Flexibility Fig. Originality Fig. Elaboration Fig. Total Verb. Fluency Verb. Flexibility Verb. Originality Verb. Total

Males (N=59) Means S.D.

53.71 11.01 52.73 11.16 56.81 12.69 47.52 8.85 210.67 30.81 48.69 12.45 48.75 10.98 52.50 10.97 150.19 32.00

Females (N=59) Level of Means S.D. t-Ratios Signif.

54.72 9.61 0.7484 ns 51.25 12.13 1.2858 ns 53.25 10.95 2.3056 <.05 53.94 9.39 5.4050 <.OOl 212.75 30.17 0.5241 ns 57.17 13.20 5.0763 <.002 56.50 13.32 5.0344 <.002 60.39 16.83 4.2664 c.002 174.39 40.50 5.0901 <.002

shown in Table 3. First, it will be noted that the results for Forms A and B are quite consistent, indicating that the two forms of the test are functioning in about the same manner. The significant negative correlations for all of the verbal scores as well as for Figural Elaboration reflect the female superior- ity noted in Tables 1 and 2, while the significant positive correlations for Figural Originality reflect the male superior- ity on that score.

The test-retest reliability coefficients for administrations of Forms A and B one week apart are reported in Table 4 separately for males, females, and males and females com- bined. It will be noted that there is a tendency for the males to show greater stability than the females, especially on the

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The Journal of Creative Bohavlor

TABLE 3 Biserial Coefficients of Correlation for Sex on Forms A and B of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking for 59 Male

and 59 Female Fifth Grade Pupils

Biserial r Level of Biserial r Level of Measure Form A Signif. Form B Signif.

Figural Fluency Figural Flexibility Figural Originality Figural Elaboration Figural To la1 Verbal Fluency Verbal Flexibility Verbal Originality Verbal Total

.05

.14

.I8 -.31 .05

-.30 -.25 -.22 -.27

ns ns <.05 <.Ol

ns <.Ol <.Ol

<.Ol <.05

.05

.07

.16 -.33 -.03 -.31 -.30 -.26 -.31

ns ns

<.Ol ns

<.Ol <.Ol <.Ol <.Ol

.05

figural tests. Some of the differences are quite small but the trend is consistent. The test-retest reliability coefficients are reasonably satisfactory, somewhat more satisfactory for the verbal than the figural measures and somewhat more satis- factory for boys than for girls.

TABLE 4 Test-Retest Reliability Coefficients for Males and Females on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Forms A and B

Administered One Week Apart)

Measure

Figural Fluency Figural Flexibility Figural Originality Figural Elaboration Figural Total Verbal Fluency Verbal Flexibility Verbal Originality Verbal Total

Test-Retest Coefficients of Correlation Boys Girls Boys and Girls

.81 .61 .71

.78 .69 .73

.91 .77 85

.84 .79 .83

.85 .69 .77

.94 .89 .93

.83 .83 .84

.88 .87 .88

.92 .90 .92

DISCUSSION The data reported herein on the latest revision of the Tor- rance Tests of Creative Thinking are typical of those obtained on earlier versions of the test with unselected groups at the fifth grade level or above. Girls perforin at a consistently higher level than the boys on all of the verbal tasks. This is consistent with the greater emphasis in the United States on the verbal development of girls than of boys. Most of the masculinity-femininity measures developed in the United States are heavily loaded with verbal factors.

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Sex Differences in Levels of Performance and Test-Retost Reliability

The female superiority on Figural Elaboration can be ex- plained similarly. In the United States, women are expected to make things fancy and work out the details of plans. Women are characteristically placed in detail jobs and a similar role is usually expected in the home. Boys, on the other hand, seem to be freer than girls to develop their origin- ality, especially in the figural area. Even on the verbal tests, the boys performed comparatively better on Originality than on Fluency and Flexibility.

The studies of Raina and Prakash of Indian children sug- gest that the sex differences in creative functioning obtained in these and similar studies are determined primarily by differential treatment of the sexes and the identification of children with the sex roles of their culture. This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that there are no sex differ- ences among the younger children (first, second, and third grades) in Prakash‘s study, among children in the latent stage (second, third, and fourth grades) in Yamamoto’s study, and among children in the primary grades in most of the studies conducted by the senior author.

These studies provide a variety of clues that need further study. One of the more intriguing problems for further investigation is the concept of sex role identification and how one’s sex identification influences creative development. DO boys with strong male identification function less well on verbal tasks and on figural elaboration than do boys with weaker male identification? Do girls with strong female iden- tification perform better on verbal tasks and on figural elabora- tion than do girls with weak female identification? Do boys with strong male identification perform better than boys with weak male identification on the originality measures?

REFERENCES PRAKASH, 0. M. A study of the creative thinking abilities of Indian children. Master’s research paper, Univ. of Minn., 1966.

RAINA, M. K. A study of sex differences in creativity in India. 7. of Crea. Behav., (in press).

TORRANCE, E. P. Education and creative potential. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minn. Press, 1963.

TORRANCE, E. P. Rewarding creative behavior. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965.

TORRANCE, E. P. Torrance Tesfs of Creative Thinking: Norms-Tech- nical Manual. Princeton, N. J., Personnel Press, 1966a.

TORRANCE, E. P. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Directions Manual and Scoring Guide. (Separate booklets for Figural Form A, Figural Form B, Verbal Form A and Verbal Form B.) Princeton, N. J.: Personnel Press, 1966b.

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The Journal of Creative Behavior

YAMAMOTO, K. Development of ability to ask questions under spe- cific testing conditions. 7. of Genet. Psychol., 1962, 101, 83-90.

E. Paul Torrance, Chairman, Educational Psychology. Address: The University of Georgia, College of Education, Athens, Georgia, 30601.

Nicholas C. Aliotti, Professor, Educational Psychology. Address: The University of Georgia, College of Education, Athens, Georgia, 30601.

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