“we see political skill as independent from general mental ability and related to personality traits.” Their measure of political skills is outlined here.

Political Skill is constituted of four dimensions for which there is substantial evidence of content validity of the construct as established mainly through factor analysis across different samples. Ferris et al. describe the four dimensions as follows: (i) _Social astuteness_ : “Individuals possessing political skill are astute observers of others and are keenly attuned to diverse social situations. They comprehend social interactions and accurately interpret their behavior, as well as that of others, in social settings”; (ii) _Interpersonal Influence_ : “Politically skilled individuals have a subtle and convincing personal style that exerts a powerful influence on those around them. Individuals high on interpersonal influence ... are capable of appropriately adapting and calibrating their behavior to each situation in order to elicit particular response from others”; (iii) _Networking Ability_ : “Individuals with strong political skill are adept at developing and using diverse networks of people...easily develop friendships and build strong, beneficial alliances and coalitions; and (iv) _Apparent Sincerity_ : Politically skilled individuals ... are or appear to be, honest, open, and forthright... focuses on the perceived intentions of the behavior exhibited. The PSI is an inventory of 18 items that map on to the four dimensions of political skills. They were chosen from a larger list of 40 items after factor analysis and subsequent reform over different survey samples (Ferris et al., 2005).

While not yet as large as the literature on BFI on personality traits which was developed much earlier, there have also been a number of studies that seek to apply and extend the PSI to other countries such as Russia and China (Lvina et al., 2009; Shi and Chen, 2012). A number of studies have sought to relate political skills to performance in varied occupations. A meta-analysis of 35 such studies reports the interesting finding that “as the interpersonal and social requirements of the occupations increased, so did the strength of the positive relationship between political skill and task performance ratings” (Bing et al., 2011). An interesting set of studies combines PSI and BFI to examine their impact on leadership performance and one study explores the interaction between PSI and the personality traits of agreeability and conscientiousness (Blickle, et al., 2008). Interestingly, the authors find low performance for the combination of high agreeableness and low political skills. Theoretical reasons for possible mediation of personality traits through political skills on leadership behavior and performance have also been presented (Phipps and Prieto, 2011). How teacher leadership in schools is affected by political skills has also been investigated (Brosky, 2011). The combination of personality traits and political skills clearly holds the promise of interesting insights regarding leadership provided by school principals.

# **4. Rasch Modeling**

Rasch models belong to the family of Item Response Theory (IRT) models. Rasch modeling became very popular in the 1980s as a method of assessing student achievement or proficiency from standardized testing. The method is applicable generally to any setting where measurement is not 9