Higher Education Students
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of gender and nationality on the leadership practices of student-athletes in the United States and Japan.
METHODOLOGY Participants were 200 student-athletes attending a large public university either in the U.S. (Ball State) or Japan (Tokyo Gakugei University). The head coaches of five male and five female sporting teams in each school/country agreed to provide a random sample of 10 student-athletes each. Although there was a 100% return response rate, because some of the Student LPI surveys were not completed properly, the final response rate was 46 American males, 48 American females, 50 Japanese males and 50 Japanese females.
KEY FINDINGS On all five leadership practices, American student-athletes had significantly higher scores than Japanese student-athletes. In addition, females scored higher on all five practices than males in each country but only Enabling and Encouraging reached statistically significant levels. ANOVA results found no significant differences between student-athletes on any of the five leadership practices as a result of the interaction of nationality and gender.
“The results of this study indicates that nationality plays a more critical role in leadership practices than does gender” (p. 34).