The Relationship between College Students' Openness to Experience, Engagement in the Creative Process, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creative Performance in Dance Composition Classes

Objectives The purpose of this study was to explore the latent factor structure of the Creative Process Engagement Scale (Zhang & Bartol, 2010a) and the Creative Performance Scale (Mutonyi & Slatten, 2020) adapted for college dance students (Study 1), and to examine the effects of openness to experience on college students' creative performance through creative process engagement and intrinsic motivation (Study 2). Methods Study 1 was conducted on 127 undergraduate dance majors (17 males, 110 females) to test the validity and reliability of two scales. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and re-liability analysis. Study 2 was conducted on 428 dance majors (54 males, 374 females, mean age= 20.08±1.62) to examine the mediating effects of creative process engagement and intrinsic motivation on the relationship be-tween openness to experience and creative performance. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor anal-ysis, internal consistency, and regression analysis. Results In Study 1, the latent factor structure of the Creative Process Engagement Scale and Creative Performance Scale fit a two-factor structure. The internal consistency coefficient (ɑ) was .927 for the creative process engage-ment scale and .838 for the creative performance scale. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure for the creative process engagement scale and a single-factor and two-factor structure for the creative performance scale. Regression analysis showed that openness to experience has an indirect effect on creative performance through idea generation and intrinsic motivation. Conclusions Findings suggest that fostering college students' engagement in the creative process, intrinsic moti-vation, and creative performance in dance composition classes requires the promotion of cognitive styles that are open to experience.