A Psychometric Study On Emotional Intelligence Of College Students

The term Emotional Intelligence (EI) has intrigued psychologists and the popular since Mayer and his colleagues'work. In most commercial advertisements, El was seen as a single important factor which determined our success and happiness. This belief may be false. Therefore it is necessary and important to conduct a series of studies on this phenonminon systematically. Both the academic and the general community would benefit from these work.Based on the system literature review, this thesis developed the five-factor model of El through the psychometric methods. This dissertation included seven chapters. The first chapter was literature review. This section included four parts, i.e., the definition, theoritical models, instructions, and empirical studies. Three types of El was identified, they are ability El, mixed El, and trait El. At the end, we descriped the work by the Chinese psychologists.The second chapter included the questions, and content of the present study. The purpose of the current study was to test the five-factor model of El across methods such as self-report questionanire and Situational Test of El. This chapter also contained the plan of the rest of the dissertation.The third chapter demonstrated the factor structure problem of Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) which was the most-used El test, and the biases of its scoring method, the proportion consensus scoring. Based on meta-analysis, the study 1st found that the ability El theory did not get support from all the data. The 2nd study revealed the bias of proportion consensus scoring method at the individual level. Those results indicated both the theory and scoring method need to be improved.The fourth chapter tested the construct validity of a revised five-factor model of El through a self-report questionnaire, the college student emotional intelligence questionnaire (CSEIQ) (Study 3rd), which has acceptable convergent validity, discriminant validity, and predictive validity (Study 4th).The fifth chapter presented the construction of the undergrate situational test of El (UEIST) including two studies. Study 5th explored the borderlines of college students' emotional life and collected materials for the items of the UEIST. Study 6th tested the structure validity of UEIST using an empirical study whose results supported the factor structure validity and reliability. And the study 7th collected the evidence of convergent validity, discriminant validity, and predictive validity for the UEISTThe sixth chapter included two studies. The study 8th presented the characteristics of participants on the two self-developed scales. And the study 9th revisited the bias of scoring methods which replicated the results of the study 2nd and demonstrated a new fact indicating the limitation of such scales.The last chapter presented the general discussion and results, and the conclusions were added at the end. At the condition of the present study, the conclusions came as follows.First, the revised five-factor model of El got support from a series of empirical studies.Second, the scoring method adopted in the UEIST was effective.Third, the five-factor model of UEIST and CSEIQ fitted the data very well indicating they have excellent factor structure validity.Fourth, these two measurements shared a same correlation pattern with Toronto alexithymia scale (TAS 20), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-20), life satisfaction questionnaire of Adolesent (ALS), verbal comprehension (VC), and the scores of CET-4 (SCET). As expected, the correlation between the UEIST (or the FFEIQ) and TAS20 was significantly negative. The correlations between the UEIST (or the FFEIQ) and the Revised NEO Personnality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) was significant positve, but less than that of Trait El. Unexpectly, the correlation between the UEIST (or the FFEIQ) and the VC (and CET) was not significant.Fifth, the correlation between the UEIST and the CSEIQ was 0.48, p<0.01 which indicated that the different measurement method measured the same construct.Sixth, the predictive power of El to the general health, life satisfaction, and academic perfomance was between 0-16% which indicated that the El's limited influence on our real life.