Can professional jewellery designers using Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) achieve an appropriate level of inter-rated agreement when judging a specific jewellery design creativity task?

The consensual assessment technique (CAT) (Amabile, 1982) is a commonly used technique for the assessment of creativity, according to which the best judges of creativity are experts of the specific domain in question. This paper will review existing research on the use of CAT within the design domain. The research strategy used is a reflection of the theories being investigated and in extending such research this study has been designed to explore whether CAT can be used as a measure of jewellery design creativity.

As required when applying CAT, 30 artworks in the form of ring designs were collected and accessed by seven professional jewellery designers for their level of creativity, technical execution and aesthetic appeal. Once the judgments were obtained, ratings on each dimension were then analysed for inter-rated agreement. In addition, the relationship between with creativity and the two other design attributes, technical execution and aesthetic appeal, was investigated.

The findings are especially significant given the fact that CAT procedure has never before been employed as a means of measuring creativity within jewellery design. Hence, due to the lack of research in the area, a benchmark should be established for further studies.