| The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study is to examine whether emotional intelligence (EI) is a stimulus for first-year student persistence (enrollment in the following semester) utilizing the Bar-On (1997) EQ-i Higher Education assessment, which is a 133-question, likert-scale self-report assessment. A total of 250 first-year undergraduate students from various academic and demographic backgrounds participated in the study. Results yielded the subscale of Independence and Impulse Control as positive predictors of student persistence as evidenced in enrollment in the following semester. Utilizing the debrief as an intervention to predict the likelihood of retention had a negative treatment effect. |
