Where the questionnaire comes from and how far to trust the result
This is a teaching questionnaire for self-assessment, not a psychometric test. This page says exactly which one it is, what the three styles mean, how it is scored, and what the result cannot tell you.
The statements
The eighteen statements are Peter G. Northouse's Leadership Styles Questionnaire from the textbook Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice (SAGE Publications). It is published here with the publisher's permission; the Croatian translation was prepared by umjetnost komunikacije. The wording is unchanged and the order is the original.
Three scales of six statements alternate through the questionnaire: statements 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 and 16 measure authoritarian, 2, 5, 8, 11, 14 and 17 democratic, and 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 laissez-faire leadership. The response scale has five points, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
The three styles
The division into authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire leadership comes from experiments by Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt and Ralph White in 1939, in which adult leaders of children's groups deliberately led in one of the three ways while observers recorded what happened in the group. Northouse reads the styles as three assumptions about people: that they need direction and supervision, that they want to take part and can take responsibility, or that they do their best work when left alone. The statements ask about exactly those assumptions, not about specific behaviour.
| Style | Assumption about people | What the leader does |
|---|---|---|
| Authoritarian | need close supervision, rewards and punishments, direction | decides, gives orders, clarifies procedures, judges achievement |
| Democratic | want to take part, want communication and support, can take responsibility | guides without pressure, helps people accept responsibility, helps them find their "passion" |
| Laissez-faire | are competent, prefer to be left alone, appraise their own work | gives room and complete freedom, stays out of the way |
How your answers become a result
- The answers to the six statements of each style are summed. Each sum runs from 6 to 30.
- The sum is read against the ranges on the scoring key: 26 to 30 very high, 21 to 25 high, 16 to 20 moderate, 11 to 15 low, 6 to 10 very low.
- The style with the highest sum is called the leading style. When two or three styles share the top sum, the page says so and does not pick one.
There is no averaging out and no comparison with other people. A sum of 24 means you mostly agreed with that style's six statements, nothing more. Someone who tends to agree with statements in general will have all three sums higher, so the relation between the sums matters more for reading a profile than any one of them alone.
What this cannot tell you
- No published reliability or validity figures. The questionnaire was written for the classroom, as a prompt for talking about one's own style, and its author presents it that way. It has not been through the checks a psychometric instrument goes through, so it should not be read as a measurement.
- No norm group. The ranges on the scoring key are a convention, not percentages of people. A sum of 22 does not mean you are an "above average" leader, only that you agreed with most of that style's statements.
- It measures beliefs, not behaviour. The statements ask what you think about people and about the leader's role. How you actually lead is visible to the people you lead, and this questionnaire does not ask them.
- The statements are transparent. It is easy to guess which answer "looks good", so the result depends on honesty. That is why it is not suitable for decisions about hiring, promotion or dismissal.
- The Croatian version is a translation. It has not been separately validated.
- The three style descriptions are ours. The statements, scales and ranges come from the source. The descriptions on the result page, with when each style helps and when it hurts, were written to what each style's six statements ask and to Lewin's and Northouse's accounts.
Sources
- Northouse, P. G. Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice. SAGE Publications. The chapter on leadership styles and the Leadership Styles Questionnaire.
- Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created "social climates". Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271–299.
- McGregor, D. (1960). The Human Side of Enterprise. McGraw-Hill.