Partly. The tendency to see yourself as an original thinker who likes finding new ways to do things is a trait: it is stable, it sits inside openness to experience and it predicts creative achievement. Creative ability and creative output are different things, assessed with tasks and records rather than questionnaires.

Where the scale comes from

The eight statements are the IPIP originality and creativity scale, written to match the creativity strength in the character strengths classification. The IPIP key page lists ten and marks two as omitted from the scored version, so the site keeps the eight it scores, such as Am able to come up with new and different ideas and Am an original thinker, with reversed statements such as Don’t pride myself on being original. You rate each on five points, the reversed ones are flipped, and the eight are added, so a score runs from 8 to 40. The IPIP key page gives coefficient alpha of .85 for the scale. No norms have been published for it on its own.

What the research finds

Connelly and colleagues (2014) sorted the measures in the openness family and found originality and creativity scales among its core members, beside aesthetics, curiosity, fantasy and unconventionality. DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson (2007) split the domain into two aspects: openness proper, which is imaginative and aesthetic, and intellect, which is about ideas and understanding. Kaufman and colleagues (2016) then found that the openness aspect predicted creative achievement in the arts and the intellect aspect predicted it in the sciences, each beyond general ability. The statements here draw on both aspects. Self-rated originality and measured creative ability are related, but only moderately.

What it is not

It is not artistic talent. The statements say nothing about drawing, music or writing, and an engineer who finds new ways to do things scores as high as a painter.

It is not creative output. An original thinker who finishes nothing scores high; a methodical maker who builds other people’s ideas scores low.

It is not intelligence, and it is not messiness. Creativity belongs to openness and tidiness to conscientiousness, which the orderliness guide covers, and the two vary largely independently.

A low score is not a lack of value. Much of the work that matters is careful execution of a good plan.

What it means for your results

A high score means you see yourself as an original thinker who finds new ways to do things; a low score means you prefer proven ways to inventing new ones. With no norms for the scale alone, the marker shows where your answers fell in the possible range, not where you stand against other people. The 120-item Big Five test scores imagination, artistic interests and intellect separately, against a sample of over 400,000 people.

The creativity test takes two minutes, is scored on your device and shows your score on the strip.