2.6.1. Alternative Uses Task (AUT)
The Alternative Uses Task (AUT) is a popular test for assessing
divergent thinking. Participants were asked to give verbal reports on as
many non-conventional uses as possible for three everyday objects within
two minutes. Two lists of objects were used for each experimental
session (pre-test: newspaper, bucket, and umbrella; post-test: paper
clip, can and shoes). Each AUT’s score was evaluated in terms of
fluency, flexibility, and originality (Guilford, 1950). The fluency
score was determined as the total number of responses; the flexibility
score as the number of response categories; and the originality score as
the frequency of occurrence of a certain response across participants.
According to Radel et al. (2015), a response frequency percentage of
less than 1% received 2 points, a frequency of 1% to 5% received 1
point, and a frequency of more than 5% received 0 points. Two
experienced coders of creativity tasks examined the responses of the
participants and their inter-rater reliability was satisfactory (ICC:
0.993 for fluency, 0.859 for flexibility, 0.880 for originality).