Paul R. Christensen

A factor-analytic study of creative-thinking abilities

Fifty-three tests designed to measure aspects of creative thinking were administered to 410 air cadets and student officers. The scores were intercorrelated and 16 factors were extracted. Orthogonal rotations resulted in 14 identifiable factors, a doublet, and a residual. Nine previously identified factors were:verbal comprehension, numerical facility, perceptual speed, visualization, general reasoning, word fluency, associational fluency, ideational fluency, and a factor combining Thurstonesclosure I andII. Five new factors were identified asoriginality, redefinition, adaptive flexibility, spontaneous flexibility, andsensitivity to problems.

A factor-analytic study of reasoning abilities

A battery of 32 tests was administered to a sample including 144 Air Force Officer Candidates and 139 Air Cadets. The factor analysis, using Thurstones complete centroid method and Zimmermans graphic method of orthogonal rotations, revealed 12 interpretable factors. The non-reasoning factors were interpreted asverbal comprehension, numerical facility, perceptual speed, visualization, andspatial orientation. The factors derived from reasoning tests were identified asgeneral reasoning, logical reasoning, education of perceptual relations, education of conceptual relations, education of conceptual patterns, education of correlates, andsymbol substitution. The logical-reasoning factor corresponds to what has been called deduction, but eduction of correlates is perhaps closer to an ability actually to make deductions. The area called induction appears to resolve into three eduction-of-relations factors. Reasoning factors do not appear always to transcend the type of test material used.

A Factor-Analytic Study of Navy Reasoning Tests With the Air Force Aircrew Classification Battery

(a) to gain further information as to the nature of reasoning abilities studied in a previous reasoning analysis (to be known hereafter as the analysis of Battery A) done at this laboratory (3~ 5, 6) ~ (b) to determine the reasoning content of the 1947 Aircrew Classification Battery (9); and (c) to link the reasoning studies of this laboratory with a similar effort at the University of North Carolina (i). To meet these ends, a battery of 54 tests was assembled, composed as follows: (a) 27 tests either identical with or adapted

A Factor-Analytic Investigation of the Factor Called General Reasoning

THIS study is one in a series designed to explore abilities considered to be important in successful performance of highlevel personnel.l Earlier studies have dealt with the rather broad areas of reasoning, creative thinking, evaluation, and planning (2-6, 8, 1 o, 12). In this investigation attention was focused on a limited section within the area of reasoning. It was designed to find out more about the nature of the factor most commonly referred

A Factor-Analytic Study of Evaluative Abilities

to explore abilities considered to be important in the successful performance of high-level personnel.! Previous analyses have been concentrated on reasoning and creative-thinking abilities and a fifth one is under way on planning abilities. In order for all these types of thinking to become effective there must be acts of self criticism, judgment, or evaluation along with them, hence the need for a study of evaluative abilities.

Ratings Should be Scrutinized

PROBABLY the most serious fault in the application of ratings is that their validity is accepted on faith, where investigation might show that the faith was seriously unjustified. The main purpose of this article is to call attention to a very striking miscarriage of good experimental intentions in connection with the use of ratings as criterion data for the validation of tests. An important secondary purpose is to describe validation procedures that are unusually informative and that include features that should meet some of the

The Relation of Certain Thinking Factors to Training Criteria in the U. S. Coast Guard Academy

THIS study is part of a comprehensive investigation of abilities that are considered to be important in the success of high-level personnel.3 In previous studies the domains of reasoning, creativity, and evaluation (3, 4, 6, 8) had been investigated. The general objectives of these studies have been to isolate and define various abilities in these domains by means of factor analysis and to construct tests that are good measures of those abilities. In the study reported here, the relations of certain tests and their factors to training criteria used by the U. S. Coast Guard Academy were investigated. Previously other tests had been developed to predict academic achievement at the Academy (1, 7). A factor analysis of entrance tests and course grades at the Academy was done by French, Tucker, Newman, and Bobbit (2). In that study a number of factors were found to be related to academic success. In addition, a factor called &dquo;grade aptitude&dquo; appeared but no entrance test was found to be

Some New Symbolic Factors of Cognition and Convergent Production1

IN previous factor-analytic studies conducted by the Project on Aptitudes of High-Level Personne1,i the investigators’ working hypotheses have been guided by the heuristic concepts of reasoning, creative thinking, evaluation, planning, and problem solving. When efforts were made, beginning in 1955 (Guilford, 1956a), to organize the growing list of known factors logically, it very quickly became apparent that they could not be grouped under those rubrics, with the sole exception of the category ofevaluation. Instead, for the most part, some very different catagories and concepts were called for (Guilford, 1956b, 1957). The end result is in the form of a unified theory of intellect that embraces all kinds of intellectual aptitude factors in a single system called the “structure of intellect” (Guilford, 1959a, 1959b). Briefly, each factor of intellectual aptitude can be categorized in terms of three basic variables: operation, content, and product. Opperations are processes; things that the organism does with the raw