Hierarchical linear modeling as an example for measuring change over time in a leadership development evaluation context

One of the difficulties in evaluating leadership development is measuring whether and how people change over the time period of the leadership development initiative. Even when change over time is an inherent part of the design and evaluation of leadership development, events may occur outside of the control of evaluators that limit the effectiveness of adequately and accurately assessing change over time. With data from a leadership development initiative designed to account for change over time, this article suggests hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as a multilevel methodological technique to assess change over time in a leadership development context. This article will use real change over time data from a leadership development initiative and discuss the logic and rationale of HLM. We use HLM as an example of a multilevel methodological tool to investigate typical change over time questions in leadership development evaluation.