The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1 - 86

Jonathan Manz

stitutions. In sum, 82 higher education institutions were represented in this dataset.
There were 5,464 participants who indicated they served as an RA. The RA sample was
reduced to 3,211 once students were removed
who were both RAs and OSLs. Other student
leaders were defined as self-identified "peer
helpers" due to having levels of responsibility similar to (but not analogous with) those of
RAs. Peer helpers-such as peer counselors,
peer educators, and tutors (Ender & Newton,
2000)-are defined as student leaders who
are selected to receive training in order to
provide some type of educational support to
their fellow students. Among those who indicated that they were serving as peer helpers,
12,471 were identified as OSLs. Using random
selection, 25% of the OSL sample was used to
obtain a sample size approximately equal to
that of RAs, which allowed for stronger comparisons among groups (Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991). The OSL sample consisted of 3,118
participants.

Instrument
The instrument employed in the MSL was
derived from the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (Tyree, 1998) designed to measure
the seven values (the seven C's) associated
with the Social Change Model of Leadership
Development. To solicit data, the MSL employed a cross-sectional approach requiring
participants to reflect on past and current
experiences. The data included pre-test items
to measure SCM values prior to college. Each
scale item and corresponding pre-test items
used Likert responses that ranged from 1
(Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree)
(MSL, 2011). Categorical items related to
student involvement (orientation leader,
86

. . . citizenship was the only value
to increase the likelihood of being
an RA, while, conversely, both
common purpose and commitment
values decreased the odds of being
an RA.

ROTC position, and honor society leadership
role) were used to separate data from RAs
and peer helpers (OSLs). An expert panel of
21 raters, principal component analysis on
pilot studies, and further reduction of items
on subsequent studies resulted in 68 items
in the instrument while having strong validity
(Dugan & Komives, 2010; Tyree, 1998). Cronbach's alpha scores ranged from .894 (citizenship) to .819 (controversy with civility and
consciousness of self ), demonstrating strong
reliability as the scores were greater than .70
(Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991).

RESULTS
Logistic regression was used to understand
to what degree the seven scales could predict
a dichotomous variable of being an RA or an
OSL (RQ1). Logistic regression allows for the
violation of the assumptions of homogeneity
of variance in arrays and normality typical of
linear regression. The binary nature of the dependent variable is best represented by a sigmoidal (S-shaped) curve rather than a standard
regression line since the dependent variable
has a value of either one (RA) or zero (OSL)
(Howell, 2010).

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1

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