I wanna to test an incubation effect on divergent thinking by using alternative use test (AUT). there is an incubation time between the first and the second time AUTs. I do not know how to give instructions for the participants: in their second time AUT test, should they repeat writing down the ideas they have written down in their first time?
or should I tell the participants they are not allowed to write down the same ideas ?
The directions (what you tell examinees) are of enormous importance. Tell them the wrong thing, or not enough, and they will not be divergent nor original. You should NOT tell them that they are "not allowed to repeat." In fact you should tell them that all ideas are good. I have given over 10,000 DT tests and have never seen any problem with repeating ideas. My own version of the test is "Many Uses." It can be given and scored on a computer. The best directions are those published by Wallach and Kogan, or Wallach and Wing. Many of us have use them over the hears. I have copies.
I also have a paper comparing the Uses test to other DT tests (citation below), and there have been 3-4 papers on incubation and time between ideas published in the Creativity Research Journal.
Runco, M. A., Abdulla, A. M., & Paek, S.-H. Which test of divergent thinking is best? Creativity: Theories-Research-Applications, 3, 4-18.
Let me know if I can help. --Mark @markrunco www.markrunco.com
The directions (what you tell examinees) are of enormous importance. Tell them the wrong thing, or not enough, and they will not be divergent nor original. You should NOT tell them that they are "not allowed to repeat." In fact you should tell them that all ideas are good. I have given over 10,000 DT tests and have never seen any problem with repeating ideas. My own version of the test is "Many Uses." It can be given and scored on a computer. The best directions are those published by Wallach and Kogan, or Wallach and Wing. Many of us have use them over the hears. I have copies.
I also have a paper comparing the Uses test to other DT tests (citation below), and there have been 3-4 papers on incubation and time between ideas published in the Creativity Research Journal.
Runco, M. A., Abdulla, A. M., & Paek, S.-H. Which test of divergent thinking is best? Creativity: Theories-Research-Applications, 3, 4-18.
Let me know if I can help. --Mark @markrunco www.markrunco.com
Another stratagem would be to use two forms of the alternate uses test. Let's say you have each participant, on each occasion, provide alternate uses for two different objects. If you have four possible objects to work with, just have them do one pair the first time, the other the second time. Counterbalance order of presentation (so half the participants get A, then B, the other half B, then A). That controls for how easy it is to come up with multiple uses for the objects. (Though you probably should do a little pre-testing of your stimuli to make sure they're comparable.) With four objects, you could even randomize further. In either case, you would not need to worry about whether some people repeated while others assumed they weren't supposed to.
Good idea Stephen. There are "equivalent" questions in the various Uses tests. Mark
Thank you very much, Mark and Stephen.
In the case of the same stimuli for pretest and post-test, even if the instructions "not allowed to repeat" are not given in the second time test, participants would probably asked the experimenters whether the same idea is needed to be written down? Then, what the experimenter should tell the participants?
To solve this issue, I plan to tell the participants in the second time test that "Now you can continue with the test, so that you do not need to write down what you have done, instead, you can write many other ideas as novel as possible."
How do you think about this?
Jim,
What you described will be fine. In general it is best to keep instructions as simple as possible, but what you wrote is not overly complex. It is probably fine. My email is [email protected] if I can help further. Best of luck, Mark
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