The principal objectives of this study were to determine: a) the direct effect of an apartment manager’s leadership style and b) the direct and indirect effects of functional health, morale, and social activity on residential satisfaction using a path model.

The sample for this study consisted of residents of government subsidized housing for the elderly in Virginia. The majority of the respondents were widowed, white females with and average age of 73. The sample was drawn from 10 apartment communities selected from a list of 19 communities containing 2,156 apartments. A self-administered instrument was developed, pretested, and revised as needed, and sent to one-half of the residents in each of the 10 communities. The responses were scored to determine the respondents' levels of residential satisfaction, perception of the apartment manager•s leadership style, level, of social activity, morale, and functional health. A total of 210 usable responses were obtained from the initial distribution of 582 instruments and one follow-up mailing. The total response rate was 36.1%. Leadership style emerged as having the strongest direct effect on residential satisfaction, .329, followed by social .222, morale, .071, and functional health, -.067. The R² was .262.

The model was refined, positioning functional health, morale, and social activity as exogenous variables with leadership style as the intervening variable. The analysis was conducted separately for the group of respondents with eight years or less of education and for the group with more education.

The total effect of every bivariate relationship was greater for the group with less education. The total effect of leadership style on residential satisfaction was .446 for the less educated group and .267 for the group with more education; for social activity, .371 and .178: for morale, .134 and .019; and for functional health, -.093 and .014, respectively. The R²s were .327 and .102, respectively.

Leadership style of the manager has a strong direct effect on the residential satisfaction of the respondents as does their level of social activity. The total effect of morale and functional health on residential satisfaction is minor with functional health having a negative effect. The residential satisfaction of those with less education was more strongly affected by all variables than were the group with less education.