An Application of Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique for Rating the Creativity of Children's Musical Compositions

Amabile has proposed that the most valid way to measure creativity is by using experts' subjective assessment of creative products—a technique she has labeled “consensual assessment.” The purpose of this study was to test the reliability of the consensual assessment technique on children's musical compositions and to determine which group of judges provides the most reliable ratings of creativity for music compositions of fourth- and fifth-grade children. The groups that were compared were music teachers, composers, theorists, seventh-grade children, and second-grade children. The interjudge reliabilities for each groups creativity ratings on 11 children's musical compositions were: composers, .04; all music teachers, .64; music theorists, .73; seventh-grade children, .61; and second-grade children, .50. Significant correlations were found between the music teachers and music theorists, and between the two groups of children. There were very weak or negative correlations between the composers' scores and the scores of the other groups.