Development and Validation of an Emotional Intelligence Test for Medical Students

Aims: Emotional intelligence is an important ability that has to be fostered among medical professionals. To foster an ability, it has to be assessed. The tests/tools already available are culture-sensitive and context-sensitive. Hence there is a need to develop a test to assess the emotional intelligence abilities of medical students. This paper describes a multiphase study in which an instrument was developed to assess the emotional intelligence of medical students.

Study Design: The study was done in four phases. The first three phases were to develop the instrument and establish its reliability and validity. The fourth phase was to demonstrate the predictive validity of the developed instrument.

Place and Duration of Study: A private teaching hospital in South India; Two years.

Methodology: In the first phase, the emotional challenges of medical students (n =55) were understood to develop the situations for the situational judgment tests. In the second phase, the instrument was developed with 38 items contributing to the constructs of EI. In the third phase, a pilot study was conducted, in which the developed tool was administered on a sample of 150 medical students. The data was used to verify the content validity, construct validity, internal consistency reliability (0.8), and predictive validity. In the fourth phase (n = 102) the test-retest reliability (with a ten-month interval between the tests) and the predictive validity (established by studying the association between EI measured with the tool and the academic performance of respondents) of the purified instrument were studied.

Results: A tool to assess the EI of medical students was developed. The tool demonstrated test-retest reliability (0.6) and predictive validity (r = 0.29; P < .01).

Conclusion: The tool would provide a premise for the development of training programs and their inclusion in the medical curriculum, which in turn would yield medical professionals who can deliver enhanced patient care. The study also showed the impact of EI on the academic achievement of medical students and hence their knowledge and skills will also be improved by including EI in their curriculum.