Measurement And Influencing Factors Of Chinese Adolescent Student Leadership

Adolescent leadership ability refers to the ability of individuals in the adolescene fully understanding and taking advantage of itself and the surrounding resources, leading others or cooperating with others to achieve the individual and common goals or vision. It is a comprehensive form of individual cognition, personality and social skills, of great importance for the youth to meet the demands of modern social life. Positive youth development theory states that every adolescent has leadership ability, and adolescene is the best time for leadership development. Understanding of the adolescent leadership qualities can make adults more effectively in the youth organization focus on helping children develop leadership and better adapt to social life.Researches on youth leadership were more found abroad at present, with well developed theories and methods, while Chinese adolescent leadership is rarely studied. The few native researches focuses on leadership dimensions of college students, training mode of middle school students’leadership development, leadership training for college students and the law of youth leadership development, not yet on measurement of Chinese adolescent student leadership ability.Therefore, this study introduced the leadership skills inventory to Chinese adolescent student leadership measurement, and revised it through the reliability and validity test, based on the former theories and methods. The revised Chinese version was then used to investigate the nationwide adolescent students’ self-perception of leadership. Characteristics of adolescents’ leadership in each stage were found by comparing the junior middle school, high school and college adolescent leadership self-perception. And the influence factors of adolescent student leadership were analyzed through the depth interview.Conclusions:1. Leadership skills inventory has good validity and reliability for Chinese adolescent student leadership measurement.2. Adolescent student leadership needs development in China. Each leadership skill is not equally developed. Skills of working with group, understanding self and making decisions were better self-pecived than communicating, and leadership is in the greatest need of development.3. Adolescent student leadership ability has different characteristics in different stage. Leadership scores increased with the rise of learning phase; High school students’ self-perception of their leadership skills were better than the others; Middle school students scored higher in working with groups, understanding self and making decisions than university students, while university students scored higer in skills of communicating and leadership.4. Adolescent student leadership ability is gender-specific. There was no significant difference between male and female students’ leadership, and both male and femal students’leadership scores increased with the rise of learning phase. The male scores of working with groups, understanding self and making decisions were highest in high school, and lowest in universicity. Self-perception of communicating increased with the rise of learning phase. The female scores of working with groups, understanding self, communicating and making decisions were highest in high school, and their scores of working with group, understanding self and making decisions were lowest in university. Female scores of communicating were lowest at the middle school level. 5. Adolescent leadership gender differences in stage characteristics. Female students in middle school and high school had higher scores for LSI-C than boys, and a very significant difference between the scores of working with groups and communicating. Male students in university had lower scores for working with groups than female students, but higher scores for the other dimensions and total scores, although the differences were not statistically significant.6. Adolescent leadership regional differences were different in phases. In middle school, adolescents in the western region scored higher than adolescents in the eastern and central areas on working within groups, understanding self, communicating, making decisions and leadership; in high school, no significant regional differences were found in each dimension; in university, adolescents in central region scored higher the than adolescents in eastern and western regions.7. Factors affecting adolescent leadership ability include self-awareness of leadership, family environment and school factors. Family environment refers to family construction, educational level of parents and parenting style. School factors include activity participation, peer relationships, and leadership experience.