More than appropriateness and novelty: Judges' criteria of assessing creative products in science tasks

The present research used a qualitative methodology to examine the criteria that judges employed in assessing creative products elicited by two science tasks. Forty-eight responses were produced by sixth grade students and were then assessed by three groups of judges with different levels of expertise. Verbal protocol and interviews were conducted to collect data and framing analysis was used to analyze data. Overall, judges employed appropriateness, novelty, thoughtfulness, interestingness, and cleverness as their assessment criteria. Each criterion included several interpretations and the criteria were related to each other. Moreover, three judge groups differed in their use of criteria and the criteria also varied by task.