Date of Award

6-1993

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Uldis Smidchens

Second Advisor

Dr. Patrick Jenlink

Third Advisor

Dr. Shirley Van Hoeven

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the leadership behavior patterns of principals of public schools in Michigan as related to family birth order. The 341 elementary, middle, and high school principals chosen in this study were surveyed with a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire elicited responses from the principals to attempt to relate family birth order with concern for production and concern for people. Ninety percent of all potential subjects participated in the survey. The survey responses were applied to the Leadership Grid ® (Blake & McCanse, 1991) for comparison.

The t test for independent means was used to compare the group scores of first-born principals with later-born principals. Since the two tailed probabilities of all three null hypotheses were greater than the alpha of .05, no conclusion could be drawn about the difference between the group of first-born principals and the group of later-born principals with respect to concern for production, concern for people, or participatory leadership behavior. Additional study is required to determine the effect of self-reporting of leaders' behavior versus reporting of leaders' behavior by followers when attempting to relate family birth order and leadership behavior.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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