MAKASSAR, Indonesia April 19 2026 /IOP/–Every morning, millions of employees log in, open their laptops, and wait — not for a software update, but for a leader who genuinely understands the digital world pressing in around them. In an era where artificial intelligence, big data, and remote collaboration have redrawn the map of every organization, leadership quality has never mattered more. Yet for years, no one had a scientifically rigorous way to measure it.
What actually separates a great digital leader from a merely adequate one? Is it technical fluency, the courage to embrace calculated risk, or the ability to hold a team together through the turbulence of constant technological change? A team of Indonesian researchers decided to stop guessing — and start measuring.
The study, titled “Empowering Digital Transformation: Developing and Validating a Digital Leadership Scale Through Rasch Model Analysis,” was published in Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives (Taylor & Francis Group, April 2024). Conducted by Novina Sabila Zahra and Hillman Wirawan, the research set out to build a psychometrically sound instrument that objectively captures how digitally capable a leader is — as seen through the eyes of the people working under them every day.
The researchers began with 30 questionnaire items organized around six dimensions of digital leadership: digital knowledge and literacy, vision, customer focus, agility, risk-taking, and collaboration. What distinguishes this study is not only what was measured, but how. Rather than relying on conventional factor analysis, the team applied the Rasch Model — specifically its Partial Credit Model (PCM) variant for polytomous data — alongside Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analysis. Think of the Rasch Model as calibrating a precision thermometer: the goal is an instrument that reads the same temperature whether used in Jakarta or Makassar, regardless of who holds it.
After surveying 233 employees across private and public sector organizations in Indonesia, every item underwent rigorous statistical screening. Six were removed for violating local independence — meaning they were subtly nudging responses to neighbouring items rather than measuring independently. Four more were eliminated for poor model fit. One final item was dropped because it showed differential functioning by gender, meaning men and women were interpreting it differently. The result: 19 items that are statistically sound, internally consistent, and free from gender bias. The scale achieved a person separation reliability of .94 and item separation reliability of .83, both well above the recommended threshold of .70.
This finding speaks directly to SDG 4: Quality Education. Developing capable leaders is, fundamentally, an educational undertaking. Without a trustworthy measuring instrument, leadership training programs are built on intuition rather than evidence. This validated scale gives organizations — companies, government agencies, hospitals, and universities alike — a scientifically grounded foundation: one that identifies exactly where digital leadership capacity is lacking, guides targeted interventions, and makes it possible to evaluate whether training programs are genuinely working over time.
The authors acknowledge the tool currently captures only the subordinate perspective. Future iterations should incorporate leaders’ self-assessments for a fuller, multi-source picture. But as a rigorous starting point, this research gives organizations something they have long needed: not merely a vision of what great digital leadership looks like, but a reliable, fair, and validated way to measure whether it is actually there.
Reference:
Zahra, N. S., & Wirawan, H. (2025). Empowering digital transformation: Developing and validating a digital leadership scale through Rasch model analysis. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 23(3), 261–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/15366367.2024.2334591
Contact:
Novina Sabila Zahra
novina.zahra@unhas.ac.id | Telp: +62 853-9812-0801
