Developing an Instrument to Assess Higher Education Leadership.

Abstract

An instrument was developed to assess the construct of higher education leadership from discrete innate (possessed) and extrinsic (directed toward others) points of view. Dimensions of the latent construct of higher education leadership were identified, and their content and the relationships between their indicators were mapped according to the construct's nomological net, or a map of the content and relationships of this construct. The Higher Education Leadership Instrument (HELI) was developed from the process of bootstrapping the five dimensional theory of higher education leadership (integral, relational, credibility, competence, and direction/4uidance dimensions) with a measure. The pilot HELI had three sections: higher education leadership items, demographic information, and open-ended questions about the survey and the instrument. Responses to the HELI were received from 232 academic deans through the World Wide Web. The HELI is meant to be an assessment of the attributes or behaviors leaders consider to be necessary for effective leadership. It may be necessary to revise and restructure the instrument to reflect combinations of the constructs of leadership. This preliminary work appears to have developed a promising version of the assessment. (Contains 66 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Higher Education Leadership Instrument Running head: DEVELOPING A HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP INSTRUMENT DEVELOPING AN INSTRUMENT TO ASSESS HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP