 Splitting degree of roots of unity over a finite field

With $m$ the characteristic-prime-free part of $n$, all roots of unity over a finite field lie in ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^s}$ exactly when $m\mid q^s-1$. This follows from the cyclicity of the multiplicative group of a finite field. For $m=1$ the least positive degree is one. A primitive root of order $m$ has the same field degree, because its Frobenius orbit closes exactly when $m\mid q^s-1$.