Article
The relationship between the servant leadership behaviors of immediate supervisors and follower’s perceptions of being empowered in the context of small business.
Quality Criteria
1. The sampling strategy is appropriate and justified.
Rate
2=Good
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) The study uses a non-probability sampling strategy for explicitly stating that a combined purposive and snowball sampling method is used.
b) The authors do not provide the reasons for using this sampling strategy. However, as a correlational design, the sampling strategy is implicitly understandable.
Quality Criteria
2. The sample size is appropriate and justified.
Rate
3=Excellent
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) As a correlational study, the participants are 116 individuals.
b) The sample size is much larger than the minimum size (30 participants) for a correlational design.
c) The authors have done their best to reduce the chance of sampling error by selecting as many possible participants as possible.
Quality Criteria
3. High quality instruments are used to gather data.
Rate
3=Excellent
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) The authors use two instruments to collect the data: the Essential Servant Leadership Behaviors (ESLB) and the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire II (CWEQ II).
b) The ESLB instrument measuring the independent variable is the behavioral observation checklists type of instruments; The CWEQ II instrument measuring the dependent variable is the attitudinal measures type of instruments.
c) The ESLB instrument contains 10 clear questions and returns a Cronbach alpha of .90 indicating a high internal reliability; the CWEQ II instrument consists of 19 questions divided across six subscales and returns Cronbach alphas of .77, .67, .86, .77, .62, and .76 respectively, which indicate a strong internal reliability and consistency.
d) The authors include many citations to the literature indicating that the instruments are previously developed and used for research purposes.
Quality Criteria
4. The data are gathered using ethical quantitative procedures.
Rate
3=Excellent
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) The researchers obtain consent from participants because the individuals are willing to take the survey.
b) One group of the participants are adult business students recruited from a specific Californian college, and the permission is granted by the college.
Quality Criteria
5. The data are gathered using standardized quantitative procedures.
Rate
2=Good
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) The two instruments include closed-ended questions that have preset response options so that all participants use the same standard set of options for their responses (definitely no, no, neutral, yes, and definitely yes).
b) There is no information of the training raters to ensure that all participants completed the instruments in similar conditions.
Quality Criteria
6. The study has a high level of internal validity.
Rate
0=Poor
Evidence and/or Reasoning
a) This study is not any type of experiments, it is a correlational one.
b) The procedures in this study is not to test whether the independent variable causes an effect in dependent variables
Quality Criteria
7. The study has a high level of external validity.
Rate
2=Good
Evidence and/or Reasoning
The researchers select a convenience sample, obtain a sample size that is large considering the type of design, use procedures to encourage as many participants as possible, and obtain a relatively high rate of response from participants (130 out of 156 response).
Total Score = 15 (11-16 = Adequate quality)
References
Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Van Winkle, B., Allen, S., DeVore, D., & Winston, B. (2014). The relationship between the servant leadership behaviors of immediate supervisors and follower’s perceptions of being empowered in the context of small business. Journal of Leadership Education, 13(3), 70-82.
https://create.twu.ca/ldrs591-sp18/unit-5-learning-activities/