Home Environment and Student Creative Thinking: An Educational Data Science Analysis of PISA 2022

TL;DR

This study analyzes how physical and digital resources in students' home environments are independently associated with creative thinking performance across 60 countries, highlighting their complementary roles in fostering adolescent creativity.

Contribution

It identifies and models two distinct latent factors—Physical and Digital Exposure—in home environments and demonstrates their separate and combined influence on student creativity.

Findings

Both physical and digital resources significantly relate to creative thinking.

Physical and digital exposures are independent and complementary.

The model shows excellent fit with high validity.

Abstract

This study investigates how student exposure to resources in their home environments relates to creative thinking performance, using data from the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking assessment. It focuses on two primary questions: (1) How strongly is exposure to cultural, educational, and digital resources associated with creativity? (2) Do students perform better on divergent thinking tasks when physically engaged or digitally stimulated? Drawing on a sample of 15,425 students from 60 countries, the study applies high-dimensional regression and factor analysis to identify patterns across a wide range of exposure variables. To model the latent structure of home environment variables, we conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The analysis specified two latent factors: Physical Exposure and Digital Exposure. The model demonstrated excellent fit, with a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of 0.971 and a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.038. When both factors were entered together in the regression, physical and digital exposures each contributed unique explanatory power. There is no indication that one simply proxies the other; rather, they appear to be complementary dimensions of a creative home environment. This study offers compelling international evidence that both physical and digital resources in the home environment play significant, independent, and complementary roles in shaping adolescent creative thinking abilities. These findings have direct implications for efforts to promote creativity and equity in education.