"The primary purpose of this study was to empirically examine an emerging, youth-defined framework of leadership, the Collective Change Youth Leadership Framework, with a national sample of youth. This framework was developed from two initial studies with youth, one that explored ideas about leadership through Photovoice (Mortensen, et al., 2014) and a second that used Concept Mapping to understand how youth define leadership. The proposed framework includes six dimensions of leadership that reflect youths' perceptions of leadership: anyone can be a leader, creating change, collective action, modeling and mentoring, strong character, and motivation and ambition. By testing this framework on a national sample, this study aimed to deepen current understandings of what leadership means to youth, and add to the literature a youth-defined framework of leadership. The second purpose of this study was to understand variables that relate to youths' perceptions of leadership. Several variables previous researchers have linked to youth civic engagement including sense of empowerment, critical consciousness, adult support, and background characteristics such as and age were explored. These findings can inform future leadership development efforts so more youth will engage in these opportunities and take on leadership roles within their communities both now, and as adults."--Page ii.
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