Currently, we are conducting a study related to servant leadership and leadership effectiveness. Basically, we averaged the measures of several followers to get one overall rating of their (common) leader’s level of servant leadership and leadership effectiveness. Other measures of variables in this study were completed by leaders themselves, such as personality etc.. Do I need to consider this will be a multi-level analysis, as we have aggregated the scores from followers into leader's level..? Thank you very much.
Though the principles of Leadership are the same for all levels, it does change n style for various levels in the organization. While at the lower levels , slightly authoritarian or rather persuading style may be relevant ; but as you go higher up the organization, more participation and consultative style will be relevant because you would like to factor their experiential learning.
I'm assuming that you do not have data from each follower on several leaders. If this assumption is true, then I think multilevel analysis is not especially appropriate. The unit of analysis is the leader. It seems like, in your model, the dependent variable is leadership effectiveness; the independent variables are servant leadership and personality, etc. This is a straight-forward regression analysis.
My experience is that you'll find very significant results for servant leadership predicting leadership effectiveness. Employees have difficulty analyzing their supervisor's behavior and effectiveness, so they use the quality of the relationship they have with him or her as a proxy of leadership behaviors and effectiveness. If you can get effectiveness ratings from a source independent of the employee (e.g., the supervisor's manager), I believe that the results would be more persuasive.
I endorse David's answer. The unit of analysis is the key for deciding the level of analysis. In addition, people tend to mix their impressions, hence, using objective aspects of a behavior might bring about a more reliable measurement.
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