Perceived emotional intelligence, anxiety and affect on university students

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Perceived emotional intelligence (PEI), anxiety and affect become especially relevant among the teaching staff during the initial training period. The main purpose of this study aims to check the links between PEI, anxiety and affect, detect any significant differences depending on the socio-demographic indicators taken into consideration (gender, age and academic qualification), as well as predicting which indicators could be considered in measuring trait anxiety. The sample is made up of 325 students at the University of Jaen (Spain) involved in teaching degree programmes. The tools deployed consisted of a socio-demographic questionnaire (gender, age and academic qualification), the Trait Meta-Mood Scale 24 –TMMS 24- (Fernández-Berrocal, Extremera and Ramos, 2004), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory –STAI- (Spielberger, Gorsuch y Lushene, 1970; 2008), as well as the PANASN Scale of positive and negative affect (Sandín, 2003). Significant differences (p<.01) have been obtained in some instrument dimensions depending on the socio-demographic variables taken into consideration (gender, age and academic qualification), as well as important correlations between the instrument scales (p<.05; p<.01). Finally, similar results were obtained both for men and women as regards the most reliable variables predicting trait anxiety in the lineal regression analysis carried out by using the stepwise regression method, negative affect resulting the most important variable concerning women, while the dimension “perception of PEI” resulted the most influential one with reference to men; in both cases, these variables proved the most relevant to ensure predictability. The achieved results relate to those obtained in other studies implemented in similar contexts.