Applications of item response theory to measurement issues in leadership research

The measurement of a variety of leadership constructs has been a persistent source of debate and critique for many areas of leadership research. As such, leadership researchers have devoted substantial efforts to demonstrating the psychometric quality of their measures. Yet, the techniques used in these efforts have not kept pace with the advances in psychometric theory and methods. This is regrettable given that modern psychometric techniques, such as item response theory, provide additional insights over and above those gained from classical psychometric techniques. This paper presents an introduction to item response theory and demonstrates the application of both cumulative and unfolding IRT models to measurement issues in leadership research using leader–member exchange as an example.