Research Summary: Resources for creative development: introducing the QELC-Creativity

Researchers have introduced and tested the QELC-Creativity, a 40-item psychometric instrument adapted from the Questionnaire of Educational and Learning Capital to evaluate personal and environmental resources vital to student creative development. Validated across 6,967 students from Ukraine, Greece, China, Sudan, and Pakistan, the underlying extended two-factor model demonstrated approximate metric invariance, indicating stability across diverse international settings despite reliance on nonprobability sampling.

Why it matters

This matters because it provides educational systems with a cross-nationally comparable measurement model for diagnosing the internal and external assets that facilitate creative development. Standardising these metrics enables education authorities to benchmark support systems across culturally diverse student populations using a shared framework. Consequently, systemic interventions aimed at fostering innovation can be grounded in validated empirical assessments of educational capital.

Key insights

• The QELC-Creativity adapts the Questionnaire of Educational and Learning Capital to assess personal and environmental resources relevant to creative development.
• The 40-item framework harmonises individual perceptions of internal attributes and external environmental support.
• The instrument was validated on nonprobability samples totaling 6,967 screened students across Ukraine, Greece, China, Sudan, and Pakistan.
• An extended two-factor model derived from Ukrainian subsamples demonstrated that factor loadings could remain equal across tested countries, supporting approximate metric invariance.

Source

Frontiers in Education — https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2026.1980824