A STUDY OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF 11TH CLASS STUDENTS

Abstract

Title: A Study of Emotional Intelligence and Social Behaviour of 11th Class Students Pages: 301 Researcher: Shaista Majid Advisor: Prof. Dr. Rehana Masrur University: Allama Iqbal Open University Subject Area: Secondary Teacher Education Year: 2012 Degree: Doctor of Philosophy in Education There has been an increasing awareness of improving quality of education in recent years, and efforts have been focused on motivating young college students towards more serious study attitudes. Strong mind and emotionally balanced personality may perform better than the frustrated one. The more serious and caring the attitude towards studies the better will be acceptable social behaviour of the young boys and girls at the colleges. Emotional intelligence plays an important role in making the youngsters better able to know themselves and their emotions as well as the feelings of others. Emotional skills are important for social and emotional adaptation that leads to success in all areas of life. The present study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence and social behaviour of 11th class students. It further explores the levels of emotional intelligence and types of social behaviour of academically high achievers and low achievers. The population of the study comprised all 11th class students studying in all Government Intermediate/Graduate/Postgraduate Colleges of the districts of Rawalpindi and Attock, as the study was delimited to the two districts; Rawalpindi and Attock, of the province Punjab in Pakistan. The population includes many strata; urban and rural, male and female, therefore Stratified Sampling Technique was applied for the selection of each stratum. The sample was selected by obtaining fifty percent of each stratum; i.e. rural and urban, male and female. The sample size comprised of 819 students. The Stratified Sampling Technique was used to select equal-sized samples (50 percent) from each subgroup (strata); i.e. male, female, urban, and rural. An emotional intelligence measure, The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) developed by BarOn and Social Behaviour Inventory (SBI) developed by the researcher and the result of first year Part I Examination, 2007 were used as the research inventories for data collection. A pilot study was conducted on fifty students to ensure the validity and reliability of the research inventories. The Alpha Coefficient of Reliability 0.90 for SBI and 0.92 for EQI ensured the reliability of inventories for this research. Means, percentages of the frequencies, standard deviation and means of means were computed on SPSS 14. Pearson’s correlation was applied to see the relationship of types of social behaviour with levels of emotional intelligence of the 11th class students. The t- test of independent samples was applied to analyze the significant level of the variables. The results showed that both inventories have internal consistency of items. Significant relations were found between social behaviour with peer, group, curriculum, college and levels of EI. Emotional intelligence was highly correlated to social behaviour overall and was not significantly correlated to the academic achievement of students at the end of 1st year of college studies. The number of high achievers in academics was higher than that of the low achievers. The findings suggest that emphasis should be placed on the understanding of 1st year students’ EI. Training in managing and regulating emotions should be taken into account during college education to reduce the deviant behaviour of the youth. Presently in the curricula of colleges of Pakistan the development of EI is not emphasized. An emphasis on channelizing the youth’s energies towards more productive and useful aspects of their lives will help overcome the behaviour problems.