Introduction

Development of creative abilities of pupils is dictated by the current stage of development of education system and society. Creativity is a competitive advantage in the modern world. Individuals without creativity will be left behind in a world in which non-creative thought can be automated, but creative solutions to problems are at a premium (Abbott, 2010)].

Creativity refers to a stable trait that enables the production of novel, original, and appropriate solutions and is distributed throughout the population (Brown, 1989). Self-efficacy, in contrast, refers to a person's belief in his or her own ability to actually perform specific tasks to achieve some objective given whatever obstacles may exist (Bandura, 2007).

There are many scientists devoted to studying broad aspects of creativity – its essence, importance, formation, connections with other traits, estimation and many others (Beghetto, 2013; Starko, 2014). Valuable contribution to the development of both theory and practice of creative training were made by R.A. Begetto (Begetto, 2013) and A.I. Starko (Starko, 2014). For more profound research of creativity there is a need in quantitative estimation of this construct (latent variable). Daniel Abbott constructed the questionnaire for estimation of creative self-efficacy (Abbott, 2010). The quality of this questionnaire was analyzed in the framework of classical test theory that cannot be used to obtain estimates of the latent variable on a linear scale [1]. In this investigation, students’ creative self-efficacy is measured on a linear scale that, among other things, facilitates statistical analysis of this construct depending on various factors. Some aspects of this trait were measured within the framework of the theory of latent variables (Maslak, Rybkin, Anisimova, & Pozdniakov, 2015; Su-Pin Hung, Po-His Chen, & Hsueh-Chih Chen, 2012).

Objectives

The purpose of this investigation is to establish a unidimensional interval scale for the construct “creative self-efficacy” in order to measure  and compare the level of higher education of students in Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria based on this latent variable.

Research question

The following steps were taken in order to complete this investigation:

- Explore the possibility that indicators of questionnaire coherently define the latent trait “creative self-efficacy” with linear measurement properties;

- Measure the level of students’ creative self-efficacy on a linear scale;

- Carry out multifactor analysis of variance of the estimates of students’ creative self-efficacy depending on their university, gender, and grade.

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