Improved Forced Choice Assessment of Negative Leadership

Abstract

Leadership research has historically tended to focus on the positive qualities of leaders. This perspective has changed in recent years as research has focused on more negative leadership behaviors. A variety of new constructs have now been introduced on negative leadership, however, the methods most commonly used to measure these constructs (e.g., Likert-type scales in which respondents directly rate the negative behaviors of their leader) are vulnerable to socially desirable responding and cognitive processing biases. The present research seeks to address this problem by developing an alternative and more robust means for assessing negative leadership behaviors. Specifically, we integrate Schmidt’s (2008) five-factor measure of negative leadership with recent work in forced-choice assessment methodologies and ideal-point IRT (item response theory) models. The result is a newly developed forced-choice measure of negative leadership. The construct validity of our new measure is presented in this poster. Results indicate that our measure produces more conceptually distinct dimensions of negative leadership while maintaining high convergent validity with Schmidt’s (2008) original measure.