Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Academic Stress of Higher Secondary School Students

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic stress level of students at the higher secondary level. It is mainly concerned with 300 XII standard students studying in Govt., Aided and Private schools in Thiruvananthapuram district. The Mangal Emotional Intelligence Inventory (MEII) was used for collecting the scores of Emotional intelligences in higher secondary school students. Also, the Academic Stress Inventory (ASI) prepared and standardised by the investigator was used for collecting the scores of academic stresses of the same group of students. The data collected is subjected to statistical analysis, namely, mean, standard deviation, ‘t’- test and Karl Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient ‘r’. Results show a negative significant correlation between emotional intelligence and academic stress among the students. Also, it was found that the emotional intelligence of boys is significantly higher than that of girls and the academic stress of higher secondary students is not influenced by gender. The present study proved that the emotional intelligence is the most important psychological variable which determines a student’s future and academic progress.