Situational Judgment Tests and Transformational Leadership: An Examination of the Decisions, Leadership, and Experience in Undergraduate Leadership Development Open Access

We examined a large multi-year undergraduate leadership development program (LDP) across seven universities and used an integrated framework of transformational leadership and situational judgment tests (SJTs) during a critical and formative period of leadership development. This study was the first to show a significant relationship between experience and transformational leadership style in students in an undergraduate LDP using SJTs and the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ). The results showed that greater experience was positively related to increased transformational leadership style and that high overall decision scores were indicated in all groups of students with varying leadership styles and varying experience levels and decision abilities. The study findings and implications are discussed, along with recommendations for leadership educators to develop decision quality in LDPs.