Assessing Emotional Intelligence

Managing human emotions plays a critical role in everyday functioning. After years of lively debate on the significance and validity of its construct, emotional intelligence (EI) has generated a robust body of theories, research studies, and measures. Assessing Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Research, and Applications strengthens this theoretical and evidence base by addressing the most recent advances and emerging possibilities in EI assessment, research, and applications. This volume demonstrates the study and application of EI across disciplines, ranging from psychometrics and neurobiology to education and industry. Assessing Emotional Intelligence carefully critiques the key measurement issues in EI, and leading experts present EI as eminently practical and thoroughly contemporary as they offer the latest findings on: EI instruments, including the EQ-I, MSCEIT, TEIQue, Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory, and the Assessing Emotions Scale. The role of EI across clinical disorders. Training professionals and staff to apply EI in the workplace. Relationships between EI and educational outcomes. Uses of EI in sports psychology. The cross-cultural relevance of EI. As the contributors to this volume in the Springer Series on Human Exceptionality make clear, these insights and methods hold rich potential for professionals in such fields as social and personality psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, psychiatry, business, and education. Following the original publication of the MSCEIT and Bar-On scales, both of which have undergone revisions, other newer scales have also been developed that are grounded in empirical evidence. This book will focus on tests that have been extensively studied and researched and even some new tests that have been subjected to at least some validity testing – that is, show some form of validity (e.g., internal, test-retest) or demonstrate some form of validity (e.g., face, discriminant or external). Some of these new tests have been used in different countries or in specific applications such as in sports psychology. The area of test development is emerging quickly and there is a lot of confusion, particularly for practitioners and people who want EI to be implemented in certain environments. A book that canvasses the existing tests, presents information on how they were developed, their psychometric properties, how they can be applied, and so forth, will be very well received and popular given the size of the EI market worldwide now. As mentioned, these measures not only reflect the current theoretical models describing EI, but become the very tools that are used to validate the construct. At the same time, practitioners are raising questions about the variations in EI scales and the resulting different factors, which, in turn, influence how this information will be presented to and used by consumers (e.g., individuals, corporations, research programs).