Comparing School Leadership Perceptions Using Rasch Measurement in Hong Kong and the United States

• In Event: Park Central Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Framing and Comparing Leadership Internationally

Abstract

Examining differences in principals’ perceptions of leadership across countries may provide insight into achievement differences. The purpose of this study was to explore differences in principals’ perceptions of leadership activities between two countries: (1) Hong Kong SAR, and (2) the United States. This paper also illustrates the use of Rasch measurement theory as a modern measurement approach to exploring the psychometric properties of a leadership survey, with a focus on differential item functioning. We applied a Rating Scale formulation of the Many-Facet Rasch model to examine the degree to which the overall ordering of leadership activities was invariant across the two countries. The results suggested that there were significant differences in the difficulty ordering of leadership activities across countries.

Authors

• Sijia Zhang, The University of Alabama

• Stefanie A. Wind, The University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa

• Mitchell Porter, The University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa