Using Kruskal Wallis H Tests to Compare Citation Differences Among the Leading Leadership Theories
Keywords:
higher education, artificial intelligence, citations, ethical, family-wise error, h-index, homoscedasticity, impact, inclusive, influence, Kruskal Wallis H Test, leadership theory, transformational leadershipAbstract
When a leadership theory appears in the title of the article, will Google’s Cited By counts differ among the leading topics in leadership theory? We tested this research question by comparing Google Scholar “Cited By” citation counts for 400 articles across 10 leading leadership theories, using a control group as the baseline, and splitting the articles into high- and mid-volume tiers. Using Kruskal–Wallis H tests, we found that when a leadership theory appeared in the title of the article, articles consistently outperformed controls with (p < .001) with large effect sizes for Tier 1 (η² = 0.283) and Tier 2 (η² = 0.162). The takeaway is clear: strategic, well-crafted titles with theory-specific keywords don’t just describe your work, they can meaningfully amplify its visibility and scholarly impact. We make two recommendations for authors seeking ways to improve the impact of the leadership theory articles they write.
