| TITLE | College Student Leadership Development: Program Impact on Student Participants |
| RESEARCHER | Daniel J. Pugh Graduate School of Education University of Georgia Doctoral Dissertation: May 2000 |
OBJECTIVE
To examine the impact of the University of Georgia’s campus-based
LeaderShape Institute on student participants.
METHODOLOGY
Fifty-five students were selected for the program and 51 (93%)
agreed to participate in the study. Each completed the student version of the Leadership
Practices Inventory at the beginning and at the completion of the program. Nineteen of
the participants were interviewed about their experiences upon completion of the
LeaderShape (6-day) program. Participants also completed several "artifacts" of the
program which allowed for some assessment of program effectiveness as measured by
participant accomplishments. There were 23 men and 28 women in the sample, with most
being either juniors (23) or sophomores (18), and participants were equally divided
between greek and non-greek affiliated. Nine were non-Caucasian.
KEY FINDINGS
Test-retest reliability of the Student Leadership Practices Inventory
was statistically significant (p < .001) with correlations exceeding .51 over the ten-week
interval. Three of the five leadership practices were statistically greater at time two over
time one: Challenging, Inspiring, and Encouraging. The differences for Enabling and
Modeling were in the right direction, with Enabling approaching statistical significance
(p < .09). "These findings were not explained by demographic variables" (p. 58): year in
school, family cluster affiliation, gender, GPA, greek affiliation, or race.
The author also noted that "participant’s prior conceptual understanding of the importance of integrity in leadership was reinforce rather than increased" (p. 85). He also noted that "the use of Kouzes and Posner’s Student Leadership Practices Inventory (S-LPI) was the appropriate instrument with which to conduct the quantitative portion of this inquiry: (p. 88).
