Our recommendation first: if your university or supervisor already holds an MLQ licence, use the MLQ, because it is the best-known transformational leadership measure and examiners recognise it. If you are buying access yourself and need a short follower-rated survey, the seven-item Global Transformational Leadership scale (GTL) is the practical alternative, provided you confirm the reuse terms. If you cannot obtain permission for any scale, a qualitative design avoids the problem. The table shows how the options compare.
How do the main options compare at a glance?
| Option | What it is | Access for a student | Best suited to | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), Bass and Avolio | A well-known leadership instrument published by Mind Garden, available as leader and rater forms; the short form is the 5X-Short | Commercial licence: the publisher’s terms allow a stated number of reproductions within three years of purchase, including online administration, and require payment for any extra | Studies that need a recognised, multi-scale measure and have a licence through the university | Cost and tracking of administrations; contact the publisher about student terms before you design the survey |
| Global Transformational Leadership scale (GTL), Carless, Wearing and Mann (2000) | Seven items, one for each of seven behaviours, rated for frequency on a five-point scale | Published in Journal of Business and Psychology, 14(3), pp. 389–405; check the publisher and authors for reuse terms | Short follower-rated surveys where response rate matters | Measures one overall construct, so it cannot compare the four transformational components |
| Qualitative design with no scale | Interviews or case studies about how leaders and followers describe leadership | No instrument licence needed; ethics approval still required | Small organisations, hard-to-reach samples, exploratory questions | Cannot test statistical relationships |
Whichever route you choose, state the source of the measure, the number of items and the response scale, and report reliability from your own data. Our guide to which psychology scales you can actually use explains how to check permissions, and our guide to showing a questionnaire is valid and reliable explains what to report.
What is transformational leadership, and how do you define it?
Transformational leadership is a style in which a leader’s behaviours influence followers, inspiring them to perform beyond their perceived capabilities. The concept goes back to James MacGregor Burns, who described leaders and followers raising each other to higher levels of morality and motivation, and it is usually described through four behaviours known as the four I’s: idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration.
For your dissertation, define it with a cited source, say which components your study measures, and decide whose perspective counts. Follower ratings of a leader are more common and generally more defensible than leaders rating themselves, because self-ratings tend to be flattering.
Option 1: the MLQ
The MLQ was created by Bruce Avolio and Bernard Bass and is published by Mind Garden. It comes as a leader form and a rater form, and the short version is the 5X-Short. The publisher’s licence grants permission to reproduce a specified number of copies within three years of purchase, and reproduction covers all forms of administration, including online surveys. You must track administrations and pay for any beyond the number purchased.
Who it suits: a study with a licence already arranged by the university or supervisor, or a funded project, especially if you want to compare several leadership styles. Where it falls short: the cost and the administration count can be awkward for a small student survey, so contact the publisher first, and never copy items from a pdf you found online.
Option 2: the GTL
Carless, Wearing and Mann (2000) developed the GTL as a short measure. It has seven items, each describing one transformational leadership behaviour, and followers rate how often their leader shows each behaviour on a five-point frequency scale. Studies that use the scale cite the original authors’ Cronbach’s alpha of .93 and convergent validity with longer leadership measures such as the MLQ. Treat those figures as the original authors’ results, not as a guarantee for your sample, and read the original paper for the details of its validation sample.
Who it suits: a short online survey of employees about their line manager, where a long instrument would depress your response rate. Our guide to realistic response rates explains why length matters. Where it falls short: it reports one overall score, so you cannot compare idealised influence with intellectual stimulation, and the original validation sample may differ from yours, so discuss transferability.
Option 3: a qualitative design
If you cannot obtain permission for a scale, or your organisation is small, a qualitative design may serve you better. Interview leaders and followers about specific episodes of leadership, analyse the transcripts thematically and use the four I’s as a sensitising framework rather than as scales. You avoid licence costs, but you must justify the sample, protect confidentiality in a small organisation and avoid claiming statistical generalisation.
How do you decide?
- Do you already have a licence? If your department provides the MLQ, use it.
- Do you need components or one overall score? Components point to the MLQ; one score points to the GTL.
- How long can your survey be? Short surveys favour the GTL.
- Who will rate the leader? Follower ratings need enough followers per leader, which affects your sampling.
- What can you confirm in writing? Keep the permission email in your appendix.
What designs and hypotheses suit a leadership dissertation?
Illustrative hypotheses, invented for teaching:
- H1: Higher follower-rated transformational leadership is associated with higher job satisfaction among team members.
- H2: Higher follower-rated transformational leadership is associated with lower intention to leave.
- H3: Perceived support mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and engagement.
The dependent variable is often satisfaction, commitment, performance or burnout. Our guides to job satisfaction and to burnout in nursing show how to pair a leadership measure with an outcome measure. Judge and Piccolo (2004) is a widely cited meta-analysis comparing transformational and transactional leadership, useful for your literature review and for justifying your hypotheses.
What does a worked example look like? (illustrative)
Invented for teaching: a student wants to know whether team members in one retail company who rate their manager as more transformational also report higher job satisfaction. She chooses follower ratings, uses a short published leadership scale whose reuse terms she has confirmed in writing, pairs it with a published satisfaction scale, and invites around 120 employees across ten stores. She expects a modest response rate, so she plans a sample-size calculation based on the lowest realistic return. She analyses the data with a correlation and, if assumptions hold, a regression with tenure as a control. Her limitations section notes that managers are nested within stores, that ratings come from the same people as the outcome, and that one company limits generalisation.
How do you report the measure in your methodology? (illustrative)
State the construct, the instrument and its source, the number of items, the response scale, who completed it, and how you obtained permission. An illustrative paragraph: “Transformational leadership was measured with a seven-item scale developed by Carless, Wearing and Mann (2000), on which team members rated how often their line manager showed each behaviour on a five-point scale. Permission to use the scale was obtained from the authors (Appendix B). Cronbach’s alpha in this sample was calculated and is reported in Table 4.1.” Replace the details with what you actually did, and only claim permission you hold. If you used the MLQ, name the form, the licence and the number of administrations covered.
How do you reduce bias when employees rate their own manager?
Employees may worry that their manager will see their answers, which can push scores upwards. You can reduce this by making the survey anonymous, hosting it outside the organisation, reporting only aggregated results, avoiding questions that identify small teams and saying clearly in the information sheet who will and will not see the data. If the same people rate the leader and report their own satisfaction, both answers share the same source, so acknowledge common-source bias as a limitation. If you can, collect the outcome from a different source, such as an organisational record, or collect the two measures at different times.
What do you do about followers nested within leaders?
If ten followers rate the same manager, their ratings are not fully independent, because they describe one person. For an undergraduate project, the practical options are to average followers’ ratings per leader and analyse at leader level, which reduces your sample size, or to analyse at follower level and state the limitation clearly. A master’s project with enough data may use multilevel modelling, but only if your supervisor confirms you have the training and the sample for it. Whatever you choose, justify it and report how many leaders and followers you have.
What are ten researchable leadership titles?
- Does follower-rated transformational leadership predict job satisfaction among retail employees?
- Line manager leadership style and intention to leave in a small hospitality group.
- Transformational leadership and team engagement in a university professional services department.
- How do ward managers describe their leadership? A qualitative study in one hospital.
- Leadership style and psychological safety in software teams.
- Does remote working change followers’ perceptions of their leader’s support?
- Leader and follower perceptions of transformational behaviour: do they differ?
- Transformational leadership and innovative behaviour in a manufacturing firm.
- Student leadership in societies and its link with member commitment.
- Leadership and burnout among care assistants: a correlational study.
What mistakes do markers see?
- Using the MLQ without a licence. Reproducing items from the internet is a copyright problem and can undermine your ethics approval.
- Using leader self-ratings only. They are prone to flattery, so justify them or add follower ratings.
- Reporting only the original alpha. Calculate reliability for your own sample. Our guide to Cronbach’s alpha shows how.
- Ignoring nesting. If several followers rate one leader, say how you handle it or acknowledge it as a limitation.
- Overclaiming causation. A single survey shows association, not that leadership caused the outcome.
Tesify helps you structure your dissertation from the research question to the chapters, so your construct, measure, hypotheses and limitations stay consistent while you write every word yourself. Over 9,000 students have used it across more than 15,000 chapters. Plan your leadership dissertation with Tesify.
Leadership scale FAQ
Can I use the MLQ in my dissertation?
Only with permission from the publisher, Mind Garden, whose licence covers a stated number of reproductions within three years and includes online administration. Ask about student terms before you design your survey.
What is the Global Transformational Leadership scale?
It is a seven-item measure by Carless, Wearing and Mann (2000) in which followers rate how often their leader shows seven behaviours on a five-point scale.
Which is better for a student survey, the MLQ or the GTL?
The MLQ suits studies that need several leadership components and have a licence. The GTL suits short surveys that need one overall score, once you have confirmed reuse terms.
Should leaders rate themselves or should followers rate them?
Follower ratings are more common and more defensible. Self-ratings can be flattering, so justify them if you use them.
What are the four I’s of transformational leadership?
Idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration.
Can I do a leadership dissertation without a questionnaire?
Yes. Interviews or case studies about leadership episodes avoid licence issues but need careful sampling and confidentiality.
How many participants do I need?
It depends on your analysis, so calculate it rather than guessing, and allow for a realistic response rate and for followers nested within leaders.
Do I need ethics approval?
Yes, and you need the organisation’s permission as well. Employees may fear that managers will see their answers, so guarantee anonymity in your design.
What outcome variables pair well with leadership?
Job satisfaction, commitment, engagement, intention to leave, burnout and performance are the most common, each with its own published measures.