Abstract
Subjective creativity assessments that are originally developed as the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) rely on human raters to score creativity of the products. A few controversial issues in this approach are related to tasks, subjects, raters' qualifications and performance, and methods for analyzing rating scores. This study addressed these issues under the theoretical framework of rater-mediated assessment and Rasch measurement theory. Data were collected from three groups of raters with different levels of expertise who assessed creativity of 24 6th graders in gifted and nongifted classes in two science tasks. Results indicated that (a) nongifted students showed higher creativity than gifted students in two science tasks, (b) three groups of raters had comparable scoring performances of creativity in two tasks, (c) only one rater exhibited differential rater functioning between nongifted and gifted students, but a few raters showed differential scoring between two science tasks. Implications of using rater-mediated assessment and Many-Facet Rasch measurement model to understand subjective creativity assessments are discussed, and future studies are suggested.
