Abstract

This study investigated some of the factors that influenced students' servant leadership ratings of a mayor. For this study, 1,030 students at St. Philip's College agreed to read one of twelve scenarios and provide a servant leadership rating of the mayor in the scenario. There were six scenarios that addressed an affirmative action issue and six that addressed an environmental issue. Each of the twelve scenarios was evenly divided among African-American, Hispanic, and White . Also, the scenarios were equally divided between males and females. A pilot study of 71 students was conducted to determine the appropriateness of the five-point Likert-type scale. The dependent variable was the servant leadership rating of the mayors. The independent variables were the ethnicity and gender of the mayors and the students as well as the types of scenarios. The data for this study were analyzed using a six-way ANOVA. In affirmative action scenarios, white mayors were rated higher than Hispanic mayors and African American gave white mayors the highest rating. In the environmental scenarios, African-American mayors were rated higher than white mayors. Finally, regardless of the type of scenario, white male students rated African-American mayors higher than white mayors