A STUDY ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE OF ADOLESCENT SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. During the period of adolescence the presence of emotional intelligence is very important because it makes the individual to monitor one's own and other's emotions. The aim of the present study is to determine the level of emotional intelligence of school going adolescents and to compare the emotional intelligence of school going adolescents with respect to their gender, habitat, family structure, grade and district. The sample of the study consists of 400 Upper Primary and secondary adolescent school going children from six schools of Paschim Medinipur and South-24 Parganas district in West Bengal. The sample was drawn on the basis of non-probability convenient sampling technique. The measuring tool in this research originally was of two-point emotional intelligence scale entitled as ‘Emotional Intelligence Scale (ESI – SANS) of Dr. A. K. Singh and Dr. S. Narain which was translated in Bengali version by B. C. Ghorai and L. L. Mohakud. Collected data were analyzed using the statistics- Mean, Standard Deviation (SD) and Percentage analysis. t- Test, ANOVA and Scheffe analysis were conducts with SPSS programme. Hypotheses were tested at probability level of 0.05. Results of the research showed that most of the adolescent students possessed average emotional intelligence. Significant differences in the level of emotional intelligence were found among adolescent school going children with regard to their gender, grade and district. No significant differences in the level of emotional intelligence were found among adolescent school going children with regard to their habitat and family type.