Validación empírica de una escala para medir la Inteligencia Emocional, desde un modelo mixto, en una muestra de estudiantes de la Bahia de Cádiz

Abstract

The emotional intelligence (EI) issue was firstly developed in 1990 (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) but it is not until the publication and diffusion of the writings of Daniel Goleman (1995) and Bar-On (1992, 1997) that the term EI begins to be known. However, even though in a short term these works have stimulated interest in EI, in a long term these writings have brought confusion and division between two ways of considering. On the one hand, the cognitive ability model considers EI as a set of mental abilities related with an adaptive use of emotions (understanding, managing, labelling and planning). A suitable way of assessment EI could be through cognitive task as MSCEIT (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test). On the other hand, the mixed models (Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 1999) establish a wider perspective and consider that, in addition to cognitive aspects, features of an individual's personality must also be taken into account, the personality constructs, and they usually use self-reports to assess the EI (for example, EQ-i Bar-On, 1992, 1997 and ECI-emotional competence inventory, Boyatzis, Goleman and Rhee, 2000). This work, based in mixed model, did an empirical validation of the Goleman's Model. Predictive validation with measures of personality (BFQ, based in Five Factor Model, Caprara, Bararelli & Borgogni, 1995), of family warm (FES; Moos, Moos & Tricket, 1995), and metacognitive learning strategies (ACRA; Roman & Gallego, 1994). Construct validity through Lisrel 8.30 program (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1994). Like this measure of EI (named CIE) was related with others interesting variables as sex, age, numbers of brothers and sisters, and level of studies. Using a sample of 1002 students of "Bahia de Cadiz" a validity was performed a reliability measure of El (alfa of Cronbach 0,893), based in Goleman's model. The results confirm that this model is more a success personality pattern than a explicative model of EI, and this work did a critical revision about intelligence and EI literacy.