Academic (learning) performanceDate of publication: 08/07/2007 This section is still being developed but will eventually contain complete summaries of studies that have studied academic (learning) performance based on the Bar-On conceptual and psychometric model of emotional-social intelligence. In the meantime, I have summarized the key studies that I am aware of. Should you wish to share findings from a study that you have conducted or have detailed information on studies that others have conducted focusing on this topic, please use the template provided above for summarizing this study and email it to us (info@reuvenbaron.org). You are invited to provide results that confirm or refute these findings and help us understand this area better. In contrast to a study conducted by Newsome et al. in 2000 that did not reveal a statistically significant relationship between EQ-i scores and performance at school, four major studies conducted on much larger samples in South Africa, Canada and the United States [Bar-On, 1997b, 2003; Parker et al., 2004; Swart, 1996] clearly indicate that such a relationship exists. Moreover, these results confirm that the Bar-On model is capable of identifying and predicting who will perform well at school and who will not.
In a path analysis conducted by James Parker and his colleagues on 667 Canadian high school students [Parker et al., 2004], the overall degree of correlation between emotional-social intelligence and scholastic performance was found to be .41 indicating a moderate yet statistically significant relationship between them. This means that at least 17% of scholastic performance is a function of emotional-social intelligence in addition to cognitive intelligence. These findings suggest that the Bar-On model is capable of identifying those students who will perform well and those who will experience problems.
Findings from a study conducted on 448 university students in South Africa indicated that there is a significant difference in emotional-social intelligence between successful and unsuccessful students [Swart, 1996]. These results were confirmed by an additional study conducted on 1,125 university students in the United States, which was described by me in 1997 [Bar-On, 1997b]. In both studies, the more successful students were found to be the more emotionally and socially intelligent. More specifically, the ability to manage one’s emotions, to be able to validate one’s feelings and to solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature are important for being academically successful; additionally, academic performance appears to be facilitated by being able to set personal goals as well as to be sufficiently optimistic and self-motivated to accomplish them.
More recently, Claude Marchessault examined the impact of EQ-i scores on the grade point average (GPA) of 106 first-year university students in an American university [C. Marchessault, personal communication from the 7th of January 2005]. The students completed the EQ-i in the beginning of the academic year, and their GPA was calculated during the middle of the year. Multiple regression analysis revealed a correlation of .45, which once again confirms a significant relationship between emotional-social intelligence and performance in school.
The importance of developing and applying EI performance models in the school setting is that they will be helpful in identifying students who are in need of guided intervention. Comparing the students’ EQ-i results with such performance models will provide a scientific way of pinpointing their EI strengths and weaknesses. Based on the results to date, the enhancement of the weaker EI competencies and skills is expected to increase performance at school.
The findings presented here compare quite favorably with those generated by other EI measures. For example, Brackett and Salovey describe correlations between the MSCEIT and scholastic performance in the .20 to .25 range [2004].
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