The impact of freshmen college leadership experiences on their leader self-efficacy development in historically black institutions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of college leadership experiences on the leader self-efficacy development of freshmen in two historically black institutions (HBIs). Design/methodology/approach Data were collected in two phases from 200 freshmen to assess their leader self-efficacies at the beginning and end of a 16-week semester. The authors developed an eight-item questionnaire to measure college leadership experiences and adapted the 22-item leader efficacy questionnaire developed by Hannah and Avolio (2013) to measure self-efficacy. Findings The result of the structural equation modeling revealed that college leadership experiences have a significant positive impact on college leader self-efficacy. Moreover, college leadership experiences significantly mediated the effect of high school leadership experiences on college leader self-efficacy. Pre-college leader self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on college leader self-efficacy but an insignificant effect on college leadership experiences. The findings indicated that holding leadership positions and volunteering in the first semester of college were positively and strongly related to college leadership experiences. Originality/value First, this study will empirically examine the causal relationships between college leadership experiences and leader self-efficacy by controlling for the effect of the pre-college leader efficacy. Without controlling for the pre-existing differences among participants, the effects of college leadership experiences on leader self-efficacy development may be overestimated. Second, despite self-efficacy being a critical component in leadership models and being important in boosting leaders' confidence, only limited research uses well-defined conceptual leadership models in studying student leader self-efficacy. This study fills the gap by using a contemporary conceptual model that encompasses the key leadership variables necessary in assessing the student leadership development.