Impacts of Students’ Gender, Academic Grades and Socioeconomic Classes on their Emotional Intelligence: An Application of Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

Emotions are important aspect of human lives. The awareness, regulation and use of one’ own and others’ emotions called emotional intelligence can determine success in everyday life. It is linked to students’ academic success, mental health and effective social relationships. Emotional intelligence is found to be influenced from different social, economic and personal variables. Hence, researchers investigated the impact of Pakistani university students’ gender, socioeconomic classes (SECs) and academic grade son their emotional intelligence. Data were collected from volunteer university students through an online survey. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling approach was applied to scrutinize conjectured path relationships of students’ gender, academic grades and SECs with their emotional intelligence. It was found that the students’ lower middle and upper lower SECs are more evidently associated with students’ emotional intelligence as compared to the upper middle and lower SECs. The presence of male gender made a negative but insignificant direct impact on emotional intelligence whereas, the relationship of male gender with academic grades was significant and negative, and the impact of students’ academic grades on emotional intelligence was positive and significant. However, the relationship of students’ gender with emotional intelligence was partially mediated by their academic grades in examinations. It is recommended that male students of lower SECs should be offered guidance and counseling programs to save them from emotional problems.