Measuring Creativity in Digitally Recorded Behaviour

What is C-Tracer?

C-Tracer is a data analysis tool designed to measure creativity in individuals or teams based on their digitally recorded behaviours. Validation studies demonstrate that C-Tracer can quantify creativity not only in data from artificial creativity tests (such as the Alternative Uses Task by Guilford), but also in natural behaviours (such as playing video games, writing stories, or conducting design sessions). These studies confirm that C-Tracer's automatically generated creativity scores align with human expert ratings of participants' creativity in recorded behaviours. Notably, C-Tracer analyses creative processes including their final outcomes, going beyond the evaluation of end products only. Its automation enables efficient creativity assessments for large participant groups, providing objective scores rather than relying on subjective expert judgements.

A brief summary of the concept is available HERE.

How does C-Tracer Work?

C-Tracer quantifies creativity based on the definition of creative products, requiring that they be new (original, unique, etc.) and effective (successful, task-adequate, etc.). The tool examines the behaviour sequences of each participant - individual or group - and isolates those sequences that result in a successful solution. It then quantifies the average novelty / differentness across all these effective sequences.

The tool provides several metrics, including Creativity (C-Score), Novelty (D-Score), Fluency (all processes / attempts of the participant: succesful and unsuccessful), Elaboration (process length), and Flexibility (number of distinct actions taken).

Regarding data analysis, creativity can be assessed in two different ways. One approach is to compare the behaviour sequences of a selective participant to the behaviours of all other participants (e.g., how creative is person A’s idea compared to all ideas suggested by other participants before?). Another approach is to compare an individual's behaviour to their own previous behaviours (e.g., how creative is idea 10 of participant A compared to the 9 ideas this person has suggested before?).

If you want to learn more about how C-Tracer works, you can find further information HERE.

How to Try it Out?

C-Tracer is freely available for use with your own data files HERE.