Comparative Study of Emotional Intelligence between Yoga Practitioner & Non-Yoga Practitioner Adolescent Girls

Adolescent development is a transitional & critical period, marked by significant physical, hormonal and psychosocial changes causing emotional turbulence which turn to abnormalities, if not managed carefully. The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of yoga on emotional intelligence using comparative study between yoga-practitioner & non-yoga practitioner adolescent girls, aged 14 to 16 from Pune city, through a descriptive comparative method. For this study a sample of 80 yoga practitioners & 80 non-yoga practitioners were selected from 2 schools using non-probability based convenience sampling technique. This way a total of 160 samples were selected from both the schools in order to measure the Emotional intelligence of 80 yoga practitioners & 80 non-yoga practitioners the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Adolescent Short Form (TEIQue-ASF) developed by Petrides and Sangareau et al., (2006) was used. The statistics of collected data was analysed. The mean scores of emotional intelligence of 80 yoga practitioners & 80 non yoga practitioners were 145.65 (±19.12) & 122.81 (±20.76) with standard error of mean 2.14 & 2.32 respectively. Further in order to compare the mean of both the groups independent sample t test was computed, where mean difference is 22.84. The calculated t value is 7.24 for degree of freedom 158. The study’s findings indicated that there was a significant difference at 0.05 level of significance (p = 0.0001). Based on the above statistical analysis it was concluded that regular yoga practice significantly improves emotional intelligence in adolescent girls.