The Structural Validity of the Italian Version of the Short Scale of Creative Self

The Short Scale of Creative Self (SSCS) is a creativity measure that differentiates between creative personal identity (CPI) and creative self-efficacy (CSE). It has been applied in many research contexts and adopted for use in many languages. Although its factor structure is usually interpreted as favoring an independent clusters two-factor CFA model, there were surprisingly few efforts to understand the nature of the consistently high correlation between the factors of CPI and CSE. The present study sought to examine the extent to which the high overlap between CPI and CSE factors in the SSCS may be attributed to overlooked issues of structural validity. The analyses were based on the Italian SSCS. The factor analysis of multiple datasets collected on the samples of Italian adolescents (N = 1,642) and adults (N = 951) revealed multiple issues with local model fit for CSE items and challenged the applicability of the independent clusters two-factor CFA model to Italian SSCS. Two alternative, yet complementary, factor models are proposed for the Italian SSCS. We define generalizability limits of our findings, discuss the measurement implications, and outline directions for future psychometric evaluations of SSCS.