Factor Structure and Convergent Validity of

the Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ)

Maja Balta (maja.balta@outlook.com)
MSc Psychology programme, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka

Siniša Subotić (sinisa.subotic@pmf.unibl.org)

Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Banja Luka

Milica Drobac Pavićević (milica.drobac@ff.unibl.org)

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka

Abstract
The Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ) is a measure
of creative achievement across 10 domains of creativity. The
goal of this study was to examine the factor and convergent
validity of the CAQ’s Serbian translation on a general sample
from the Republic of Srpska. A total of 300 participants
(M = 24.48, SD = 3.07 years; 66.3% female; 75.3% college
students or graduates) competed the CAQ, a measure of self-
assessed creative behaviour, and a creative personality
checklist. Both two-factor (Arts and Science) and three-factor
(Expressive, Performance, and Scientific) CAQ models
achieved good fit. However, even though the data supports
both two- (slightly better) and three-factor structures of the
CAQ, there is an issue with the dimensions’ low reliabilities
(slightly worse in the three-factor model) and pronounced
correlations of residuals. The mean CAQ score is also much
lower than the referent value. Because of this, even though the
convergent measures, i.e., correlations with self-assessed
creativity and creative personality are in the expected range
(albeit slightly lower for the creative personality than the
referent value) and the CAQ is often used for the non-artist
general (namely: student) samples, we are reluctant to fully
recommend its usage on the general samples in our culture, as
the CAQ’s content might be “too hard” for our participants.
Keywords: creativity, creative achievement, creative
personality, questionnaire validation
Introduction
Creativity can be studied and measured on different ‘levels’,
most commonly conceptualized as the ‘4P’s’ (Gruszka &
Tang, 2017; Rhodes, 1961), which stands for: person,
product, process, and press (of the environment). In this
paper, we were interested in psychometric validation of the
Creative Achievement Questionnaire – CAQ (Carson,
Peterson, & Higgins, 2005), which measures the
product/achievement aspect of creativity. The CAQ assumes
that creativity is domain specific, i.e., creative achievement
in one creativity domain does not necessarily imply creative
excellence in all areas (Carson et al., 2005).
The CAQ is the most frequently used self-reported
creativity measure (Wang, Ho, Cheng, & Cheng, 2014),
utilized in various creativity-related research (e.g., Jauk,
Benedek, & Neubauer, 2014; Kaufman, 2013; Kaufman et
al., 2016; Mar, DeYoung, Higgins, & Peterson, 2006; Silvia,
Kaufman, Reiter-Palmon, & Wigert, 2011; Kéri, 2011;
Silvia, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2009; White & Shah, 2011). The
CAQ measures creative accomplishments in 10 domains:
visual arts, music, dance, architectural design, creative
writing, humor, invention, scientific discovery, theater/film,
and culinary arts. Each domain is measured with 7 true/false
items.
Regarding the CAQ’s latent structure, Carson and
colleagues (2005) originally proposed the three-factor
solution, comprised of Expressive, Performance, and
Scientific achievement factors, but they also considered the
two-factor solution, which assumes Arts and Science factors.
Note that some other findings, based on the Rasch analysis,
supported the two-factor structure (Wang et al., 2014).
The CAQ has been shown to have low to moderate
correlations with IQ (i.e., r = .14, Carson et al., 2005;
r = .34, Mar et al., 2006) and divergent thinking tests
(i.e., r = .21; Silvia & Kimbrel, 2010; r = .47, Carson et al.,
2005), and moderate correlations with Openness to
Experience (i.e., r = .33, Carson et al., 2005), and broader
measures of creative personality, such as the scores on the
Creative Personality Scale (Gough, 1979) (i.e., r = .33,
Carson et al., 2005). The CAQ also strongly correlates with
other self-report creativity measures, e.g., with the Creative
Behavior Inventory, which is a measure of everyday
creativity (r = .59; Dollinger, 2003).
Given the fact that the CAQ is the most popular creativity
measure (Wang et al., 2014), which has not been formally
validated to date in the Republic of Srpska’s territory, we
wanted to test its factor structure and to establish some
aspects of its convergent validity, namely in relation to the
Creative Personality Scale (Gough, 1979) and self-reported
creative behaviours (Batey, 2007; Batey & Furnham, 2008).
Since the CAQ can be used on both general samples and
artists, we focused our analysis on the general sample
participants (Carson et al., 2005).
Method
Sample, procedure, and measures
A total of 300 general sample participants from the Republic
of Srpska (M = 24.48, SD = 3.07 years; 66.3% female; 75.3%
college students or graduates) competed the Serbian
translation of the CAQ (Carson et al., 2005), another measure

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of self-assessed creativity, which targets the creative
behaviours (i.e., Biographical Inventory of Creative
Behaviours; Batey, 2007; Batey & Furnham, 2008), and the
Creative Personality Scale (Creative Personality Scale;
Gough, 1979).
The data was gathered anonymously, using an online
survey disseminated via the social networks.
The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in
the “lavaan” program (Rosseel, 2012) and other analyses in
JASP 0.9.2 (JASP Team, 2018).
Results
Both two-factor (CFI = .969, TLI = .957, RMSEA = .046
90% CI [.017, .070], SRMR = .063) and three-factor
(CFI = .969, TLI = .953, RMSEA = .047 [.019, .072], SRMR
= .061) CAQ models achieved good fit (Hooper, Coughlan,
& Mullen, 2008). Since Carson and colleagues (2005) also
use the total scale score, we tested a single-factor model,
which also achieved the overall acceptable fit values (Hooper
et al., 2008): CFI = .921, TLI = .898, RMSEA = .065 [.046,
.084], SRMR = .089. Internal consistencies, however, were
generally low in both two- and three-factor models (two-
factor: Arts: α = .76, ω = .63, Science: α = .55, ω = .41; three-
factor: Expressive: α = .58, ω = .49; Performance: α = .71, ω
= .57 ; Scientific: α = .55, ω = .41) and only somewhat better
for a total scale score (α = .81, ω = .68).
Table 1: The CFA factor loadings for two-factor model.
Loadings (Λ)
No. Domains
Arts Science
9 Drama (theater/film) .66
5 Creative writing .69
6 Humor .51
2 Music .68
1 Visual arts .45
3 Dance .60
7 Invention .56
8 Scientific discovery .50
10 Culinary arts .62
Notes: Architectural design is not included in the two-
factor model, since it had weak loadings on Science factor
in the original study by Carson and colleagues (2005).
Including Architecture in the model resulted in worsening
of the fit: CFI = .924, TLI = .899, RMSEA = .065
[.046, .085], SRMR = .089.
There were between 6 and 9 substantially correlated
(i.e., ≥ .20) residual pairs, depending upon a model. Factors
were interrelated in a lower-to-moderate range (two-factor
model: .31; three-factor model: .25, .21, and .27,
respectively). Due to marginally better overall fit and
somewhat better internal consistencies of the two-factor
model compared to the three-factor model, we are reporting
factor loadings for the former (see Table 1).
The mean CAQ score was low, with pronounced lower
value frequencies (see Figure 1). For example, total scale
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score from our sample was substantially lower than student
sample mean scores of 14.4 reported by Carson and
colleagues (2005): t(299) = -27.55, p < .001, d = 1.59.
Figure 1: The CAQ total summary scores distributions. M =
5.09, SD = 5.85, Sk = 2.52, Ku = 10.16.
The CAQ total score correlated with self-assessed creative
behavior in a moderate range: r = .40, p < .001, and with
creative personality in a lower range: r = .18, p = .001.
Discussion
Overall, even though the data supports both two- and three-
factor structures of the CAQ on a general sample of
participants from the Republic of Srpska, there is an issue
with the dimensions’ low reliabilities and pronounced
correlations of residuals. Since two-factor model showed
marginally better fit and better (i.e., “less bad”) internal
consistencies, we are giving it a slight advantage over the
three-factor model. Although Carson and colleagues (2005)
favored the three-factor solution, they also noted that “some
researchers may find it useful to employ the arts versus
science dichotomy of the two-factor solution” (p. 46). Other
researchers also provided support for the two-factor CAQ
model (Wang et al., 2014).
Convergent measures, i.e., CAQ’s correlations with self-
assessed creative behaviours and creative personality are in
the expected range, albeit slightly lower for the creative
personality than the referent value reported by Carson and
colleagues (2005).
The CAQ is often used for the non-specialized (i.e., non-
artist), namely student samples. However, the mean CAQ
scores on our sample (which is predominantly comprised of
students and college graduates) are much lower than referent
values from a similar sample used in the study by Carson and
colleagues (2005). Because of this, and because of the
pronounced ‘measurement error’ (i.e., low internal
consistencies) we are reluctant to fully recommend the
CAQ’s usage on general samples in our culture, as the CAQ’s
content might simply be “too hard” for our participants.
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