Psychometric Properties of the Chinese Leadership Practices ...

International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, Vol. 4 [2007], Iss. 1, Art. 23
For construct validity, three factors were extracted from the 28-item
Chinese LPI-observer using PAF analysis with direct oblimin rotation, and
accounted for 57.3% of the total variance. The item 7 shares future dream, item
16 looks for ways to improve, item 19 talks about guiding beliefs, and item 22
forecasts the expected future did not meet the criterion of factor loading greater
than .40 and were eliminated. The possible reason for dropping these four items is
that Taiwan’s nursing faculty perceived little about nursing leaders’ vision and
belief related to specific leadership behavior. Taiwan’s nursing deans or directors
may face restrictions in their decisions from their presidents and deans of
academic affairs; in turn, nursing deans or directors may not fully display
conviction in their commitments, owing to limited authority (Chen, Beck, &
Amos, 2005). Three factors of the Chinese LPI are consistent with Tourangeau
and McGilton’s (2004) study in which the third edition of the LPI was used and in
which three new factors named cognitive, behavioral, and supportive practices
were proposed. As a result of deleting four items through factor analyses,
psychometric properties were reexamined to demonstrate the improvement of the
24-item Chinese LPI-observer.
Psychometric Properties after Deleting Six Items
The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the 24-item Chinese LPI-observer
total scale was .96, which was the same as the original 30-item Chinese LPI and
consistently demonstrated acceptable reliability. For item analysis, all of the
interitem and corrected item-total correlation coefficients showed acceptable
homogeneity within these 24 items. In factor analysis, the three same factors were
extracted that explained 59.5% of the total variance, which was close to the
results of Posner and Kouzes’ (1988, 1993) studies. The results of concurrent
validity show that the Chinese LPI-observer total and subscales are highly and
positively correlated with the transformational leadership subscale of the Chinese
MLQ-5X, which means that both scales represent the similar concepts of
leadership behavior. Concurrent validity is also supported by the significantly
negative relationships among the Chinese LPI-observer total and subscales and
the laissez-faire subscale of the Chinese MLQ-5X. The laissez-faire style is a
nonleadership factor-nontransformational and nontransactional.
Interpretation of Three New Factors
Factors were named according to items with higher loadings and item
meaning. Factor one, enabling others to act, contains eight items (items 3, 8, 9, 13,
18, 21, 23, and 28) from most of Posner and Kouzes’ (1988) original leadership
practices of enabling others to act (see Table 2). This factor is similar to the
http://www.bepress.com/ijnes/vol4/iss1/art23
10