Part V: Creating The EQ-i 2.0 And EQ 360 2.0

Danish Norms

EQ-i 2.0 Danish Norms - Standardization

NORMATIVE SAMPLE

Data for the EQ-i 2.0 Danish Professional Norm sample (N = 600) were collected from October, 2011 to April, 2015. Data were collected by two methods: either as part of the data collection initiative intended specifically to create the Danish norms (53.2%), or from the Danish EQ-i 2.0 customer database (46.8%). The demographic composition of the normative sample is shown in Tables J.1 to J.6. All respondents were requested to provide age, gender, and occupation information; in addition, demographic data obtained through the data collection initiative included country of birth, country of residence, geographic region, education level, student status, and employment information (i.e., current employment status, organization level, and occupation area).

The normative data were collected across three age ranges, evenly proportioned by gender within each age interval (see Table J.1). All respondents were current residents of Denmark, and 95.9% were born in Denmark. Data were collected from all five regions of Denmark (see Table J.2).

Within the sample, 16.3% (52 out of 319) identified themselves as students. The majority of respondents (89.3%) had taken some form of post-secondary education (either short higher education, medium higher education, or long higher education; see Table J.3). Most respondents were employed or self-employed (88.7%; see Table J.4). The sample breakdown by occupation area is shown in Table J.5, with the largest proportions working in the areas of Information Services (26.9%), Health and Social Services (16.6%), and Education (14.6%). With regard to organizational level, just over half of respondents were non-managerial employees or staff (50.6%), while 29.6% of respondents were in varying levels of management or executive positions (see Table J.6).

NORMING PROCEDURES

The first step in the preparation of the EQ-i 2.0 Danish Professional Norms was to determine if any age or gender trends existed in the data. A series of analyses of variance (ANOVA; for the Total EI score) and multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs; for the composites and subscales) were used to examine the relationships between gender and age and the EQ-i 2.0 scores. To better control for Type I errors that might occur with multiple analyses, a more conservative criterion of p < .01 was used for all F-tests to assess statistical significance. These results are described in detail below.

Gender Effects. Results of the gender analyses showed that men and women did not differ significantly on the Total EI score, indicating that overall emotional intelligence (as measured by the EQ-i 2.0) is about the same for men and women. However, small- to medium-sized effects were seen on a number of scales (see Table J.7 for effect sizes and Table J.8 for descriptive statistics and significance test results). The largest gender difference seen in the Danish normative sample was on Empathy, with women scoring higher than men with a moderate effect size (d = -0.59). Moderate size differences were also found for women scoring higher than men on Emotional Expression (d = -0.53), Emotional Self-Awareness (d = -0.50), and the Interpersonal composite (d = -0.45). Smaller differences with women scoring higher than men were also found for Social Responsibility (d = -0.22), and Interpersonal Relationships (d = -0.21). Men scored higher than women with moderate effects on Stress Tolerance (d = 0.48), moderate to small differences in Problem Solving (d = 0.35), and small differences for the Decision Making composite (d = 0.25), Impulse Control (d = 0.20), and Independence (d = 0.20).

Age Effects. Significant differences across age groups, with small-sized effects, were found on many of the scales. The largest effect (partial η² = .052) pertained to the difference between the 18–39 and the 40–49 year-old age groups on the Independence subscale, with the older age group typically scoring higher. In general, the 40–49 and 50+ year old age groups were quite similar, and typically obtained higher scores than the 18–39 year-olds. See Table J.7 for effect sizes and Table J.9 for descriptive statistics and significance test results.

Gender × Age Interactions. Most scales showed significant interaction effects, with small to medium-sized effects. See Table J.7 for effect sizes. Across the scales, various patterns emerged based upon the age and gender categorizations. For example, the largest effects were found on Emotional Self-Awareness (partial η² = .090), Empathy (partial η² = .088), Emotional Expression (partial η² = .072), Stress Tolerance (partial η² = .068), and Independence (partial η² = .064), each with a moderate effect size. For Emotional Self-Awareness, women scored higher than men in each age group; however, scores for men increased dramatically with age, while scores for women plateaued by the 40–49 year-old age band. Similarly, Empathy scores for women were consistent across age groups, while scores for men decreased slightly between the 18–39 (M = 95.5) and the 40–49 year-old (M = 93.9) age groups, with the highest scores observed in the 50+ group (M = 98.6). For some scales (e.g., Stress Tolerance), this pattern was reversed; men scored higher than women, and the 40–49 year-olds outperformed both other age groups.

Norm Groups and Norm Construction. As seen with all other EQ-i 2.0 norm releases to date (i.e., North America, UK and Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, and Global), the age and gender analyses revealed a number of significant effects. Therefore, specific Age and Gender Professional Norms, as well as Overall Professional Norms (i.e., collapsed across age groups and genders), were both developed.

Results revealed that skewness and kurtosis values were not large enough to suggest that a normalizing transformation was necessary (skewness values ranged from -1.07 to -0.11; kurtosis values ranged from -0.20 to 1.76), and an examination of the scale histograms did not reveal any significant departures from a bell-shaped (Gaussian) curve (Figure J.1 shows a histogram for the EQ-i 2.0 Danish normative sample Total EI score). Actual construction of the norms was conducted in the same manner as the North American Norms, including the use of statistical smoothing (see Standardization, Reliability, and Validity for more information on the construction of the North American General Population Norms).

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency, a measure of reliability, conveys the degree to which a set of items are associated with one another. A high level of internal consistency suggests that the set of items are measuring a single, cohesive construct. Internal consistency is typically measured using Cronbach’s alpha (Cronbach, 1951). Cronbach’s alpha ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and is a function of both the interrelatedness of the items in a test or scale, and the length of the test or scale (John & Benet-Martinez, 2000). Higher values reflect higher internal consistency.

Cronbach’s alpha values for the EQ-i 2.0 scales for the Danish normative sample are presented in Table J.10. Although there is no universal criterion for a “good” alpha level, informal cut-offs for evaluating alpha are typically as follows: .90 is “excellent,” .80 is “good,” .70 is “acceptable,” and lower than .70 is “questionable.” The values shown in Table J.10 demonstrate acceptable to excellent reliability, and are particularly favorable given the small number of items included in most subscales. Overall, the alpha value of the Total EI scale was .96, values for the composite scales ranged from .85 to .91, and values for the subscales ranged from .73 to .89. Similar patterns were seen across the age and gender normative groups, including a Total EI alpha value of .95 or higher for each group.

The high level of internal consistency found in the Total EI score supports the idea that the EQ-i 2.0 items are measuring a single, cohesive construct, namely emotional intelligence. The same can be said of the individual components of emotional intelligence that make up the EQ-i 2.0 (i.e., the composite scales and subscales).

Factorial Validity

EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to determine whether the subscales established with the North American EQ-i 2.0 normative data empirically emerge from the Danish normative dataset. Five EFAs were conducted, in which the items within each composite scale were analyzed separately. In each EFA, a three-factor solution was forced to examine whether the items corresponding to each subscale within the composite also loaded together in the Danish normative data. As with the North American normative data, principal axis factoring extraction was used, with direct oblimin (i.e., oblique) rotation, as the factors within each composite are expected to correlate with each other. Reverse scoring was applied to relevant items prior to the analysis. Factor loadings were considered significant if they reached at least ± .30, and an item was defined as cross-loading if it was significant on more than one factor and had loadings within .10 of each other on these factors.

For the Self-Perception Composite EFA, all items on the Self-Regard and Emotional Self-Awareness subscales loaded significantly onto their respective factors (as expected by the established factor structure) and with no cross-loadings. However, two Self-Actualization items (Items 8 and 73) loaded higher on Self-Regard (.36 and .34, respectively) than on Self-Actualization (.30 and .28, respectively), and another Self-Actualization item (Item 109) loaded higher onto Emotional Self-Awareness (.32) than on Self-Actualization (.28).

For the Self-Expression Composite EFA, all Assertiveness, Independence, and Emotional Expression items loaded significantly onto their respective factors.

For the Interpersonal Composite EFA, all items for the Interpersonal Relationships, Empathy, and Social Responsibility subscales loaded significantly onto their respective factors, with the exception of one Interpersonal Relationship item (Item 41) that loaded onto Empathy, and one Social Responsibility item (Item 60) that loaded more highly onto Interpersonal Relationships (.47) than it did on Social Responsibility (.31).

For the Decision Making Composite EFA, all items for the Problem Solving, Reality Testing, and Impulse Control subscales loaded significantly onto their respective factors, with the exception of one Reality Testing item (Item 67: factor loading was .29 on both Reality Testing and Problem Solving) and one Impulse Control item (Item 36: factor loading of .28 on Impulse control) where the loadings fell just slightly below the .30 criterion.

For the Stress Management Composite EFA, most items for the Flexibility, Stress Tolerance, and Optimism subscales loaded significantly onto their respective factors, with the exception of one Flexibility item (Item 82) where the loading fell just below the .30 cutoff for the Flexibility scale (factor loading of .29).

For the most part, the EFAs generated solutions that strongly correspond to the established EQ-i 2.0 factor structure, with most items for each subscale empirically grouping together onto their expected factors (i.e., 110 out of 118 items). These results demonstrate validity for the use of the existing EQ-i 2.0 factor structure with the Danish population.

CORRELATIONS AMONG EQ-i 2.0 COMPOSITE SCALES AND SUBSCALES

Correlations among the EQ-i 2.0 composite scales and subscales were examined, and it was expected that these correlations would generally be high, given that they are all measuring the same underlying construct of emotional intelligence; however, they should not be so high as to indicate redundancy between the scales. Correlations observed in the Danish normative sample are presented in Table J.11 (composite scales) and Table J.12 (subscales).

The composite scale correlations ranged from r = .28 (between Decision Making and Interpersonal) to r = .70 (between Stress Management and Self-Perception), with an average correlation of r = .55.

For the subscales, correlations ranged from r = .02 (between Impulse Control and Assertiveness, and Impulse Control and Interpersonal Relationships) to r = .76 (between Happiness and Optimism), with an average correlation of r = .35. As highlighted in Table J.12, average subscale correlations within composite scales ranged from r = .28 for Self-Expression to r = .53 for Stress Management.

These results support the notion that a single, underlying dimension is being represented in the EQ-i 2.0; however, the values are not overly high and there is enough variation in the correlations to provide clear evidence of the multidimensional nature of the assessment, and support for the existence of composite scales and subscales. The relationships among scales observed here are similar to patterns seen with the previous EQ-i 2.0 norms released to date (i.e., North America, UK and Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, and Global).