Part V: creating the EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360 2.0

EQ-i 2.0 Higher Education Norms Supplement

Overview

The release of the Higher Education Norms provides users with the ability to score their clients against data collected from a population enrolled in post-secondary education. This chapter is designed to provide normative and psychometric information particular to the Higher Education population in North America. The EQ-i® 2.0 assessment remains unchanged, but an additional normative sample is now available (the original North American normative samples are described in detail in Standardization, Reliability, and Validity).

This chapter describes the development of the EQ-i 2.0 Higher Education (EQ-i 2.0:HEd) normative sample. For information on the EQ-i 2.0, including administration, interpretation, and development of the North American Norms, please refer to Parts I–V of the EQ-i 2.0 User’s Handbook.

This supplement begins with a description of the relationship between emotional intelligence and higher education. The features and benefits of each of the EQ-i 2.0:HEd report types (i.e., Student Summary Report, Student Comprehensive Report, Counselor’s Report) are also described. The remainder of the supplement is devoted to the development, standardization, reliability, and validity of the EQ-i 2.0 Higher Education Norms. The data were collected from 1,800 college and university undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of 3- or 4-year programs within the United States and Canada; data were evenly proportioned by gender and year of study (i.e., Year 1 to Year 4).

Overall norms (collapsed across gender and year of study) are provided; however, gender-specific norms are also available as a scoring option because several small differences in EQ-i 2.0 scores were found between male and female students. Women scored higher than men on several subscales (i.e., Empathy, Social Responsibility, Self-Actualization, Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Expression, Interpersonal Relationships, and Happiness), while men scored higher than women on the Stress Tolerance subscale. In contrast, EQ-i 2.0 scores did not change as year of study increased, therefore separate year of study norms are not provided.

Strong evidence of reliability and validity for the use of the EQ-i 2.0 in higher education samples was found. EQ-i 2.0 scores were found to be highly reliable in the Higher Education normative sample (with both strong internal consistency and test-retest reliability), and the factor structure that was developed with the North American General Population normative data was replicated with the Higher Education sample. As expected, a strong link was observed between emotional intelligence and academic achievement; students with low grade point averages (GPA) had lower EQ-i 2.0 scores than did students with moderate or high GPAs. Finally, results indicated that the EQ-i 2.0: HEd norms can be used across different programs of study (i.e., negligible differences were found between different programs of study including Arts, Science, Business, and Other), and with students of different race/ethnicities (i.e., scores were approximately the same for students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds).