Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Adjustment in Students: Academic Level and Field of Study

The main purpose has been to analyze the emotional intelligence -EI- in 147 adult students, from different academic levels: vocational students, undergraduate students and master's degree students. The associations of the three EI scales -emotional attention, emotional clarity and emotional repair- with other variables, such as personality, self-esteem, social support and general symptomatology were analyzed. Emotional repair was the EI scale that stablished greater relationships, especially with conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, self-esteem and social support. No differences were found in comparing the EI scores among the three academic levels -vocational students, undergraduate students and master's degree students-. Some differences were found between those students with extreme scores in EI, on sociodemographic characteristics, self-esteem, social support and general symptomatology. Additionally, a contrast study considering the three scales of IE, self-esteem and social support, between a sample of Computer Engineering students and those participants from the original sample studying Social or Health Sciences, showed less social support and emotional attention among Computer Engineering students than Social or Health Sciences degrees. These findings give complementary information to the research carried out in this regard, in order to implement psychological interventions to promote emotional intelligence among students from different academic levels.