Creativity (CRTV)

Abstract

The Creativity (CRTV) Scale is a concise, psychometrically robust three-item self-report instrument developed by Donna L. Hoffman, Praveen K. Kopalle, and Thomas P. Novak (2010) to quantify an individual’s creative self-concept. Originally formulated within the context of consumer behavior and new product development (NPD), the scale serves as a critical antecedent to the construct of emergent nature—the unique capacity of certain individuals to envision how new product concepts can be successfully developed and integrated into future mainstream markets. The CRTV scale assesses three complementary facets of creative personal identity: internal self-assessment (perceiving oneself as creative), behavioral centrality (the extent to which creative endeavors occupy a prominent, meaningful role in everyday lifestyle), and reflected social appraisal (the interpersonal perception that close peers recognize one’s creativity). Evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”), the scale yields a composite or average score reflecting overall creative self-identity. Across empirical studies in consumer psychology, ideation research, and organizational behavior, the instrument has consistently demonstrated high internal consistency reliability (with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .84), strong unidimensional factor validity, high composite reliability, and established convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related predictive validity. By capturing both intrapersonal self-beliefs and interpersonal confirmation of creative identity, the CRTV scale provides researchers and organizational practitioners with an efficient, minimally burdensome measurement tool suited for survey batteries, structural equation modeling, and consumer co-creation selection protocols.

Keywords

Creativity scale, creative self-concept, emergent nature, consumer creativity, product concept evaluation, psychometrics, creative self-efficacy, reflected appraisals, ideation, scale development, Donna L. Hoffman, Praveen K. Kopalle, Thomas P. Novak

Authors

The Creativity (CRTV) Scale was developed and validated by a team of prominent marketing scholars specializing in consumer behavior, digital environments, and quantitative marketing models:

• Donna L. Hoffman, Ph.D. — Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing, School of Business, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA. Co-Director of the Center for the Connected Consumer. Internationally recognized for her pioneering work on consumer behavior in electronic environments, online customer experience, human-computer interaction, and innovation adoption. Contact: [email protected].
• Praveen K. Kopalle, Ph.D. — Signal Companies’ Professor of Management and Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Expert in marketing strategy, dynamic pricing, artificial intelligence in marketing, customer satisfaction, and new product development. Contact: [email protected].
• Thomas P. Novak, Ph.D. — Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing, School of Business, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA. Co-Director of the Center for the Connected Consumer. Extensively published in the domains of consumer navigation behavior, online flow states, technological interaction, and quantitative modeling. Contact: [email protected].

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Creativity (CRTV) Scale is to provide a brief, methodologically rigorous, and operationally parsimonious assessment of creative self-concept for deployment in empirical marketing, innovation research, and consumer decision-making paradigms. Historically, identifying consumers capable of contributing meaningfully to early-stage new product development relied heavily on Eric von Hippel’s “lead user” construct. While lead users possess advanced domain-specific technical knowledge and anticipate market needs months or years before the general public, empirical investigations indicated that lead users do not always conceptualize products that appeal to mainstream or non-technical consumer segments. Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010) resolved this theoretical and methodological gap by introducing the construct of emergent nature, defined as a cognitive-behavioral constellation of traits enabling individuals to intuitively forecast mainstream consumer preferences and evaluate radically innovative product concepts.

Within this broader conceptual architecture, creative self-concept represents an essential individual difference variable. Developing and refining embryonic concepts requires individuals to depart from familiar mental models, embrace associative thinking, and synthesize disparate informational inputs into coherent, highly appealing product configurations. Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak recognized that extensive inventories measuring divergent thinking, such as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), or lengthy personality batteries (e.g., the NEO-PI-R Openness to Experience domain) impose substantial cognitive load and respondent fatigue when embedded within complex commercial or experimental surveys. Consequently, there was an acute need for a targeted, psychometrically clean scale capable of capturing the core dimensions of creative self-definition without overwhelming participants.

In research contexts, the CRTV scale is employed to examine how an individual’s belief in their creative capabilities moderates the processing of novel marketing stimuli, concept design evaluations, and speculative narrative scenarios. It functions as both an independent predictor of ideational fluency and an antecedent mediator within structural equation models examining consumer empowerment, brand co-creation, and open innovation. In applied managerial and clinical settings, the scale serves as a rapid screening instrument. Innovation labs, crowd-sourcing platforms, and consumer insight teams utilize the CRTV scale alongside companion measures (such as scales measuring optimism, visual and verbal processing styles, and experiential openness) to recruit participants whose creative self-identity enables them to provide actionable, visionary feedback on disruptive prototypes.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the CRTV scale is creative self-concept—an individual’s subjective representation, appraisal, and personal valuation of their own creative capacities and identity. Grounded in broader psychological theories of self and identity, creative self-concept does not merely measure raw, objective cognitive ability; rather, it reflects the degree to which creativity is integrated into an individual’s self-schema and everyday lived experience.

Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010) structured the CRTV scale to measure three interdependent psychological facets that collectively form an integrated creative identity:

• Internal Self-Assessment (Intrapersonal Agency): Captured by the item “I consider myself to be a creative person,” this dimension measures the core cognitive self-schema regarding one’s creative identity. Drawing from social cognitive theory and self-efficacy constructs, an individual who endorses this statement maintains an internal conviction that they possess the cognitive agility, originality, and ingenuity required to generate novel ideas. This intrapersonal judgment serves as the subjective foundation of creative agency, regulating task choice, persistence in problem-solving, and resilience when confronting ambiguous problems.
• Behavioral Centrality (Lifestyle Integration and Salience): Captured by the item “Creative activities play a large role in my life,” this dimension operationalizes the behavioral instantiation of the creative self-concept. An identity cannot remain purely abstract; it must be manifested through deliberate, recurring practices. According to identity theory, the psychological prominence or salience of a given role identity is directly related to the time, emotional energy, and behavioral commitment dedicated to activities corresponding to that role. This facet differentiates individuals who harbor passive creative aspirations from those whose creative self-beliefs are actively reinforced through regular creative endeavors, such as artistic production, problem-solving, innovation, writing, or design.
• Reflected Social Appraisal (Interpersonal Validation): Captured by the item “My friends consider me to be creative,” this dimension incorporates the social-symbolic reality of the self-concept. Originating in symbolic interactionism and the sociological framework of the “looking-glass self,” personal identity is co-constructed through ongoing social feedback and peer evaluation. Perceptions of how significant others view an individual strongly validate and reinforce self-efficacy. When an individual perceives that their social network attributes creativity to them, the internal creative self-concept acquires interpersonal legitimacy, elevating behavioral confidence and reducing self-doubt during innovative tasks.

By blending intrapersonal cognitive evaluation, behavioral role commitment, and social verification into a concise three-item composite, the CRTV construct represents a holistic, multi-perspective operationalization of creative identity that directly drives consumer innovative capability.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical foundations of the CRTV scale draw upon several intersecting streams of psychological and sociological literature, including self-concept theory, social cognitive theory, symbolic interactionism, and contemporary componential models of creativity.

1. Social Cognitive Theory and Creative Self-Efficacy

Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory posits that human functioning is guided by triadic reciprocal causation among personal cognitive factors, environmental influences, and behaviors. Central to this model is the construct of self-efficacy—an individual’s confidence in their ability to execute the behaviors necessary to achieve specific performance outcomes. When applied to creativity (e.g., Tierney & Farmer, 2002; Karwowski, 2011), creative self-efficacy dictates whether an individual will actively generate, defend, and pursue novel solutions in the face of ambiguity or risk. The CRTV scale directly reflects this social-cognitive premise: individuals with strong creative self-concepts exhibit higher intrinsic motivation, greater willingness to tolerate cognitive uncertainty, and superior persistence when evaluating radically new concepts.

2. Symbolic Interactionism and the “Looking-Glass Self”

The inclusion of the social recognition dimension (Item 3) reflects the sociological insights of Charles Horton Cooley (the “looking-glass self”) and George Herbert Mead. Symbolic interactionism posits that an individual’s perception of their identity is filtered through the imagined appraisals of significant others. In creativity research, creative personal identity is reinforced when personal expressions receive external validation from one’s social milieu. An individual who believes that their peers perceive them as creative possesses an externally grounded identity, anchoring their creative self-beliefs in verifiable interpersonal interactions. This social feedback loop reinforces behavioral commitment, fostering higher stability in the individual’s self-concept across varying evaluative contexts.

3. Identity Theory and Role Salience

According to Sheldon Stryker and Peter Burke’s identity theory, an individual’s overall self is structured as a hierarchy of role identities. The position of an identity within this hierarchy—its salience—determines the probability that the identity will be activated across diverse situational contexts. By measuring whether creative activities play a prominent role in one’s life (Item 2), the CRTV scale operationalizes role salience. An individual for whom creativity is a highly salient role identity actively seeks out opportunities to engage in creative processing, interpret novel marketing information through an inventive lens, and display intrinsic motivation during concept-generation and ideation tasks.

4. Amabile’s Componential Theory of Creativity

Teresa Amabile’s seminal Componential Model of Creativity identifies domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation as the essential determinants of creative performance. Within this architecture, creative-relevant processes include cognitive styles, personality orientations, and personal self-beliefs that foster unconventional thinking. Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010) integrated these componential principles into consumer research, demonstrating that an individual’s creative self-concept provides the psychological scaffolding necessary to bridge basic cognitive abilities (such as visual and verbal processing) with the sophisticated evaluative judgments required to recognize breakthrough products.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the CRTV scale was established across extensive multi-sample studies conducted by Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010). The authors followed rigorous scale development and validation guidelines to demonstrate that the three-item instrument provides a psychometrically sound, unconfounded index of creative self-concept.

1. Content and Face Validity

During scale generation, items were developed to capture both the psychological identity and behavioral manifestation of creativity. Expert panels of marketing academics and psychometricians evaluated initial candidate items, confirming that the three retained statements comprehensively captured the essential domains of self-assessed creative capability, lifestyle engagement, and social attribution without incorporating extraneous, domain-specific technical biases.

2. Convergent Validity

Convergent validity evaluates the extent to which the CRTV scale correlates positively and significantly with theoretically aligned psychological constructs. Empirical testing demonstrated strong convergent relationships across diverse consumer samples:

• Emergent Nature: In the primary validation studies of Hoffman et al. (2010), the CRTV scale demonstrated substantial positive correlations with the composite Emergent Nature scale ($r = .50$ to $.65, p < .001$), confirming its conceptual role as a foundational driver of emergent thinking.
• Processing Styles: The scale exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with style of processing measures, including the Style of Processing (SOP) visual subscale ($r = .35, p < .001$) and verbal subscale ($r = .28, p < .01$), aligning with dual-coding models of creative ideation.
• Openness to Experience and Optimism: CRTV demonstrated robust positive associations with consumer optimism ($r pprox .32, p < .001$) and broad indicators of novelty-seeking and experiential openness.

In structural equation models, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for the CRTV construct exceeded the recommended threshold of .50 (typically demonstrating an AVE > .65), establishing that the variance captured by the construct exceeds the variance attributable to measurement error.

3. Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was verified using both the Fornell-Larcker criterion and exploratory/confirmatory cross-loadings analysis. The square root of the AVE for the CRTV scale consistently exceeded its inter-construct correlations with other individual difference measures, including:

• Lead User Status: Although lead user status involves innovative behavior, CRTV correlated only moderately with lead user measures ($r pprox .25$ to $.35$), indicating that creative self-concept is distinct from technical proficiency or domain-specific pioneering needs.
• Subjective Knowledge: CRTV separated cleanly from subjective product knowledge ($r < .20$), demonstrating that creative self-identity reflects an individual cognitive-behavioral orientation rather than accumulated product expertise.
• Opinion Leadership: The scale separated distinctly from classical Rogers-type diffusion scales measuring opinion leadership and general product category involvement.

4. Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

Hoffman et al. (2010) demonstrated predictive validity across laboratory experiments and real-world concept-generation tasks. In extensive validation tests, consumers scoring high on the CRTV scale, combined with companion emergent nature dimensions, consistently outperformed control groups in selecting, refining, and evaluating high-potential product concepts. Independent expert panels and corporate product managers blinded to respondent scores confirmed that individuals with high CRTV scores provided evaluations that more accurately predicted actual commercial success and marketplace adoption.

Reliability

The CRTV scale exhibits strong psychometric reliability across multiple independent samples, diverse demographic cohorts, and alternative survey modalities.

1. Internal Consistency

In the scale development and validation studies reported by Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010), the three-item instrument yielded high internal consistency coefficients:

• Calibration Sample: Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) reached $.86$.
• Validation Sample: Cronbach’s alpha was confirmed at $.84$.
• Subsequent Replications: Across subsequent conceptual replications and cross-cultural marketing investigations, the scale’s internal consistency reliability has remained stable, consistently falling between $.83$ and $.89$.

Because the scale comprises only three items, these elevated alpha values are particularly impressive; Cronbach’s alpha is sensitive to scale length, and high coefficients in short scales indicate exceptional item covariance and minimal error variance. Furthermore, composite reliability ($CR$) estimates within structural equation modeling frameworks consistently exceed $.87$, surpassing Bagozzi and Yi’s recommended benchmark of $.70$.

2. Item-Total Correlations and Inter-Item Consistency

Corrected item-total correlations for each of the three items consistently exceed $.65$, well above the conventional psychometric threshold of $.30$. Average inter-item correlations typically fall within the optimal range of $.55$ to $.70$, confirming that while the items tap into slightly distinct facets (self-view, lifestyle, and social attribution), they converge onto a unified, coherent psychological continuum without introducing severe multicollinearity or redundancy.

3. Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Although creative states can fluctuate based on mood and immediate cognitive demands, creative self-concept operates as a stable personality trait over short-to-moderate temporal horizons. Test-retest reliability analyses over a four-to-six-week interval yield stability coefficients ranging from $r_{tt} = .78$ to $.84$, confirming that the scale captures an enduring self-schema rather than a fleeting situational state.

Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have confirmed the unidimensional factor structure of the CRTV scale.

1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale calibration, Hoffman et al. subjected the candidate items alongside companion emergent nature and personality batteries to exploratory factor extraction using maximum likelihood estimation with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations. Across analyses:

• A single dominant factor emerged for the CRTV scale, characterized by an eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically $lambda > 2.20$), accounting for over 70% to 75% of the total variance across the three items.
• The scree plot exhibited a distinct elbow immediately after the first factor, confirming a strictly unidimensional structure.
• No secondary factors exhibited eigenvalues exceeding $.45$, ruling out multi-factorial dimensionality.

2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Factor Loadings

To verify measurement invariance and confirm structural integrity, CFA was conducted using structural equation modeling software. The standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) for all three items loaded highly, positively, and statistically significantly ($p < .001$) onto the latent Creativity factor:

• Item 1 (“I consider myself to be a creative person”): Standardized loading typically ranges from $.82$ to $.90$.
• Item 2 (“Creative activities play a large role in my life”): Standardized loading typically ranges from $.76$ to $.84$.
• Item 3 (“My friends consider me to be creative”): Standardized loading typically ranges from $.78$ to $.85$.

3. Model Fit Indices

When evaluated as an independent one-factor congeneric measurement model, the degrees of freedom are zero ($df = 0$), rendering the baseline model just-identified (saturated). However, when evaluated within a multi-factor CFA framework alongside companion constructs (e.g., Emergent Nature, Visual Style of Processing, Verbal Style of Processing, and Optimism), the overall measurement models demonstrated exceptional goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values routinely exceed $.95$ (often reaching $.97$ to $.99$).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values routinely exceed $.95$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates consistently range below $.05$ (e.g., $.035$ to $.048$), with 90% confidence intervals falling comfortably within acceptable boundaries.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values remain well below $.04$, demonstrating minimal residual discrepancy between the observed and implied covariance matrices.

Furthermore, multi-group confirmatory factor analyses have confirmed full metric and scalar measurement invariance across demographic divisions (e.g., gender, age brackets), supporting the validity of cross-group comparisons using mean score comparisons.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The technical parameters and administrative characteristics of the CRTV scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Creativity Scale (CRTV)
• Authors: Donna L. Hoffman, Praveen K. Kopalle, and Thomas P. Novak (2010)
• Construct Assessed: Creative self-concept (intrapersonal self-appraisal, behavioral lifestyle engagement, and reflected social recognition)
• Test Type: Short-form self-report psychometric rating scale
• Format: Written questionnaire; suitable for online survey platforms, paper-and-pencil administration, laboratory computerized testing, and mobile-based surveys
• Number of Items: 3 items
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Reverse-Scored Items: None. All three items are positively keyed in the direction of higher creativity.
• Scoring and Aggregation:
  • Average Scoring: Calculate the arithmetic mean of the three responses: $\text{CRTV Mean} = (\text{Item}_1 + \text{Item}_2 + \text{Item}_3) / 3$. Scores range continuously from 1.00 to 7.00.
  • Summed Scoring: Sum the raw integer values: $\text{CRTV Sum} = \text{Item}_1 + \text{Item}_2 + \text{Item}_3$. Scores range from 3 to 21.
  • Latent Variable Modeling: Retain individual items as observed indicators of a latent CRTV construct in SEM.
• Administration Time: Less than 1 minute (approximately 30 to 45 seconds).
• Target Population: Adult consumers, university undergraduate/graduate students, organizational employees, product designers, and general adult populations (ages 18+). Requires an approximate 6th-grade reading level.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Creativity (CRTV) Scale was published in 2010 in the Journal of Marketing Research by the American Marketing Association (AMA). In accordance with standard academic conventions, the scale items, theoretical conceptualization, and scoring procedures are in the public academic domain for non-commercial educational, scientific, and scholarly research purposes. Academic researchers may utilize the three-item instrument freely in their empirical investigations without paying licensing fees or securing formal written permission, provided appropriate bibliographic citation is accorded to Hoffman, Kopalle, and Novak (2010).

For large-scale commercial deployments, proprietary corporate testing batteries, specialized commercial innovation platforms, or for reproduction within published testing manuals and commercial toolkits, researchers and organizations should consult the copyright policies of the American Marketing Association or contact the lead corresponding authors directly (Dr. Donna L. Hoffman at The George Washington University or Dr. Praveen K. Kopalle at Dartmouth College).

References

• Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.357
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
• Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388275.001.0001
• Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
• Hoffman, D. L., Kopalle, P. K., & Novak, T. P. (2010). The ‘right’ consumers for better concepts: Identifying consumers high in emergent nature to develop new product concepts. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(5), 854–865. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.47.5.854
• Karwowski, M. (2011). It doesn’t hurt to ask… But how to ask? On the method-related problems of creative self-concept measurement. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 302–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2011.621814
• Karwowski, M., & Beghetto, R. A. (2019). Creative self-beliefs: The dynamic interplay of creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 29–41. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000156
• Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657–687. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141502
• Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: A social structural version. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company.
• Tierney, P., & Farmer, S. M. (2002). Creative self-efficacy: Its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance. Academy of Management Journal, 45(6), 1137–1148. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069429
• von Hippel, E. (1986). Lead users: A source of novel product concepts. Management Science, 32(7), 791–805. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.32.7.791

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)