Faculty Validation of the Leadership Practices Inventory with Secondary School Principals

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this research was to obtain a measure of concurrent validity for the Leadership Practices Inventory with respect to secondary school principals.

METHODOLOGY
The respondents were eleven second school principals in Northeast Mississippi and 386 of their teachers. The school districts in the study were a combination of rural and urban schools and ranged in size from 287 to 1,964 students. There were seven males and four female principals, all of whom had obtained a minimum of a master’s degree; 23 percent were African-American and the remaining were European-American respondents. Among the faculty group, there were 121 male and 265 female teachers, all of them were certificated personnel and possessed a minimum of a college degree, and 92 percent were European-American. All respondents completed the Leadership Practices Inventory (Self or Observer forms).

KEY FINDINGS
The correlations between the LPI scores of the principals and the teachers were all strong, positive, and statistically significant (p < .001): Model = .83, Inspire = .89, Challenge = .87, Enable = .96, Encourage = .90, and overall = .88. The authors indicate that “The validity coefficients obtained in the analysis of data indicated a high positive correlation between principal behaviors and faculty perceptions of those behaviors across all dimension” (p. 7). They go on to say: “Essentially, the principal’s conception of his leadership behaviors was consistent with what the faculty perceived and confirmed that the instrument can provide support as to whether a principal was ‘walking the walk’ and not just ‘talking the talk’” (p. 7).

The authors’ indicate that another finding of the study is worthy of highlighting:

The inclusion of both principals and teachers who were in their initial years of working in their individual schools has significant implications as to the sensitivity of the LPI. The high positive correlations that were obtained in this study indicates that the instrument is an extremely valid measure regardless of the degree of familiarity that exists between faculty and their principal. Certainly a minimal level of experience/interaction is necessary for a valid evaluation, but an extensive professional history between a faculty member and their principal does not appear to be a limitation of the instrument” (p. 9).