There are a variety of measures for assessing trait curiosity. Many of these measures are older and have been updated. The paper you found is an older measure. There is nothing wrong with the older measure, but it has been updated. I have attached an article with an updated and well validated version for measuring trait curiosity. If you are looking for a work related measure, I recommend Mussel (2013), which was published in Journal of Organizational Behavior.
I don't think so... Exploring (or curiosity) is one of the most basic behavior in humans and animals... but I doubt it can be learnt or improved by training (as can be seen in memory, language, attention, etc). But, I think that the problem is isolating curiosity as a latent trait (as fidelity, honesty, kindness...)
There are a variety of measures for assessing trait curiosity. Many of these measures are older and have been updated. The paper you found is an older measure. There is nothing wrong with the older measure, but it has been updated. I have attached an article with an updated and well validated version for measuring trait curiosity. If you are looking for a work related measure, I recommend Mussel (2013), which was published in Journal of Organizational Behavior.
like any other trait, it is supposed to be relatively stable across various situations. It seem, that we may need to differentiate clearly between curiosity understood as trait, and state. Therefore, I always encourage to arrange self descriptive instruments along with some behavioral observation. Some papers: https://sites.google.com/site/wojciechpisula/publications
The following article discusses several measures of trait curiosity:
Litman, J. A., & Silvia, P. J. (2006). The latent structure of trait curiosity: Evidence for interest and deprivation curiosity dimensions. Journal of Personality Assessment, 86, 318-328.
I use te echological perspective (the important rol of the socioculturalcontext) and ethnogrphic observation to know some important issues in social sciences. Y recommend you to explicit and characterize te context (familiar, scholar, urban street, labor, museum.....) because curiosity is demande by context and particularities. Then, you can observe, register and validate wiht variuos observations the permanence or variation of curiosity behaviuor as a molar and not fragment of behaviour: is more important a well defintion about tha concept that a instrument to make the medition.
An conventional test can be usfull if complements the first mentiones way to cath the issue.
I would probably go for the Kashdan scale. Definitely check out Paul Silvia's work (mentioned above) - he's on Research Gate and quite nice; I'm sure he'd send you copies of whatever he's got on the subject. Curiosity will, of course, load on Factor V (Openness to Experience), so in a pinch you could use an Openness-type scale as a proxy measure. But I think you really want something specific to curiosity.