Leadership Attitudes Survey

S. Lynn Shollen and Elizabeth Gagnon
Department of Leadership and American Studies

Christopher Newport University

Introduction

The purpose of this project is to gather information about the attitudes of people in the United States about leadership within the United States. The survey will be repeated annually in order to track trends over time. The 2019 sample of 1,849 respondents is nationally representative for geographic region, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, age, household income and political affiliation. What appears on this site are frequency data for selected questions with short narrative explanations. Each month, new results will be made available as data is examined by the demographic categories of sex/gender, race/ethnicity, age, household income, education level, geographic region, employment status, religion, sexual orientation and political affiliation.

Leadership was defined for respondents as the process of influencing people toward achieving a common goal, and leaders were defined as people who influence others toward achieving a common goal. The following disclaimer was conveyed, with intention to prevent respondents from biasing their responses toward the most obvious leaders (e.g., national political leaders, CEOs) or specific leadership situations:

Please respond to the questions with the following three things in mind:

Leadership can be done by people who have a formal title and by people who do not have a formal title
Leadership happens everywhere, not just in the most obvious places such as government or business
This survey focuses only on leadership within the United States. Consider leadership within the United States broadly as you answer the questions, without focusing on one particular leader, one particular area, or one particular leadership event.

Citation:
Shollen, S. L., & Gagnon, E. (2019). Attitudes about Leadership in the United States – 2019.
Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia.

Leadership Attitudes

Demographic Data

Methods

Data was collected using a 44-question, online survey developed by the researchers in consultation with various experts in the field of leadership studies. The survey was fielded by Qualtrics to individuals 18 years of age or older and residing in the 50 states, including the District of Columbia. The fielding yielded 1,849 useable responses. The sample is nationally representative for geographic region, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, age, household income and political affiliation based on current United States census figures.

Contact

If you have any questions or wish to learn more about the project, please contact Lynn Shollen and Elizabeth Gagnon at ldsp-survey@cnu.edu.