Reliability and Validity Tests of the Harthill Leadership Development Profile in the Context of Developmental Action Inquiry Theory, Practice and Method
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: : In this paper, we describe how the Harthill Leadership Development Profile (LDP), a language-based instrument has evolved from Jane Loevinger’s Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT), and has been redesigned to assess and offer feedback about adults ’ action logics in work or educational settings, in the context of Developmental Action Inquiry (DAI) theory, practice, and method (Torbert, 1972, 1976, 1987, 1991; Torbert & Associates, 2004). Next, we challenge a recent critique of the LDP as a soft measure unsupported by published, quantitative psychometric reliability and validity studies (Stein & Heikkinen, 2009) and present both previously unpublished and previously published-but-not-aggregated studies illustrating Harthill LDP as a well-calibrated measure of adult ego-development. Because the DAI approach to social inquiry and social practice invites us all to interweave first-, second-, and third-person inquiry and everyday action, the validity studies reported tend to concern field-based experiments seeking to generate developmentally transforming change in adults, including the researchers and/or interventionists, as well as in the organizations in which they participate. In our conclusion, we briefly consider what a social science and a social practice based on the developmentally late action-logics will look like, once social science is recognized as embracing, not just 3rd-person empirical positivist research “on ” subjects, but also 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person research and action with co-participants in live settings.
Authors: William R. Torbert, Reut Livne-tar
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3003178910