Adaptation of the Emotional Quotient Inventory for its Use withPsychology Students

Abstract

The objective of the present study was the adaptation of the emotional quotient inventory to university-level students of Buenos Aires. A group of 299 students was evaluated (81.6% Female, 18.4% Male; Mage = 25.32, SDage = 7.05). Data were collected with a socio-demographic questionaire, the symptom Check List 90-R, and the emotional quotient inventory. A principal component analysis with a normalized varimax rotation was conducted, which isolated an 11-factor structure (KMO = .87; Bartlett: X²= 19655.4; 2415 df), that accounted for the 53.58% of the total variance. Internal consistency indexes were estimated via the calculation of Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, and excellent to acceptable values were found (between α = .91 and α =.65) for the eleven dimensions. Subsequently, criterion-validity evidence was found in relation to psychological symptomatology. In conclusion, a well suited instrument has been elaborated for its use in psychological assessment within students in the local context. Future investigations should continue examining the instrument’s factorial structure, given that it differs from the one proposed in its original version. Moreover, future work should address the study of the temporal consistency of the instrument scores.