Leadership in the United States is being closely examined and weighed in on heavily by the public, especially with the proliferation of social media and charged nature of current sociopolitical issues. This attention to the leadership landscape pervades not only the political and business spheres, but also education, media, non-profit, law enforcement, sport, community, and religious sectors, among others. People’s perception and willingness to follow is an important and powerful aspect of the leadership process; thus, systematically taking the temperature of follower perceptions is essential. Further, tracking trends in follower perceptions over time as various aspects of context shift is even more informative. To this end, we developed the Attitudes about Leadership in the United States national survey to help gauge the attitudes of people who live in the United States toward leadership within the nation. 

We’re glad you’re interested in the focus of this project! Here's how to best utilize this site:

• Additional details about the project can be found on the About the Project page.

• Details about the survey itself can be found on the About the Survey page.

• Survey results can be accessed via the Results menu, where they are organized by topic and within each topic identified specifically by question. Demographic information of respondents is included at the bottom of the Results menu. We currently have basic frequencies posted and are working on posting the next level of analysis that will indicate how people of different demographic categories responded to certain questions. 

• It's important to have a sense of what was going on in the world and the US nation during the survey period in order to help contextualize the data when trying to make sense of the results. Context may provide partial explanations for participants’ perceptions of leadership, although causation cannot be claimed. Major events during each survey period can be reviewed via the Annual Context menu. 

• If you are a researcher interested in additional data or building upon our study, please visit the Request Data page.

We are grateful for the support for this project provided by Christopher Newport University and the Department of Leadership and American Studies.