Measuring the Muses: Validating the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS)

The Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) is a self-report, domain-specific measure assessing creativity in 5 domains: Everyday, Scholarly, Performance, Science, and the Arts. J. C. Kaufman (2012) provided initial evidence for the K-DOCS' factor structure. However, the factor structure requires replication and the measure has not been validated. The current study examines the factor structure of the K-DOCS and applies the Amusement Park Theoretical hierarchical model as a framework to establish validation evidence. Adults from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (N = 825) and Poland (N = 500) completed the K-DOCS and a measure of the Big Five. The Polish sample also completed other creativity (e.g., CAQ, creative self-beliefs) and noncreativity (e.g., intelligence, dark triad) measures. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated the factor structure of the K-DOCS was reliable. Additionally, we demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity of the 5 K-DOCS factors based on their correlations with domain-general predictors of creativity and domain-specific predictors. We also explored the existence of latent profiles and found that the measure was not well represented with a profile structure. The current study demonstrates that the K-DOCS is a reliable and valid measure for assessing domain-specific creativity.