Development and Preliminary Validation of the Interest in Leadership Scale

Abstract

Interest pertains to an individual’s psychological arousal toward a topic, which is thought to motivate effort allocation and attention. Interest in leadership has been identified as a potential antecedent of leader development; however, supporting empirical evidence has been hindered by the lack of a relevant scale to measure the construct. Study 1 outlines the development of the Interest in Leadership Scale (ILS) using Rasch scale development principles. Study 2 establishes the predictive validity of the ILS with self-rated leadership emergence and transformational leadership behaviors. This measure is likely to prove useful in the future measurement of and research into the topic of interest in leadership.