The application of item response theory in developing and validating a shortened version of the Rotterdam Emotional Intelligence Scale

The Rotterdam Emotional Intelligence Scale (REIS) has a good balance between the emotions of self and others, which solves the problem of previous scales being unable to clearly distinguish the emotional intelligence of self from that of others. In the current study, a short version of the REIS scale was developed by the item response theory (IRT) method according to item fit, item or test information function (IIF) and differential item function (DIF) indicators. The results show that the short scale with 14 items had acceptable structural validity (RMSEA = 0.05, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.94, SRMR = 0.04) and high reliability (ω\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\omega$$\end{document} = 0.90). The high correlations (more than 0.7) between the scores of the short scale and EIS and WLEIS also verified the concurrent validity of the short scale. In conclusion, compared with the original version of REIS, the developed short version saves 50% of the items and has competitive validity and reliability. The short form will be useful for research and applied contexts where an efficient, concise version is needed.