Evaluation of the Emotional Intelligence Levels and Problem-Solving Skills of Sports Sciences Faculty Students

This study aimed to investigate the emotional intelligence levels and problem-solving skills of the students at the Faculty of Sport Sciences in terms of sociodemographic variables. For this purpose, a total of 222 students, 98 (%44.14) female and 124 (%55.86) male, studying at the Faculty of Sport Sciences of Kafkas University participated in the study. To measure the emotional intelligence levels of the students, the “Emotional Intelligence Inventory in Sports” developed by Schutte et al. (1998) and the validity and reliability of which in Turkish were performed by Adiloğulları and Görgülü (2015) and the Problem-Solving Inventory consisting of a total of 35 items developed by Heppner and Petersen (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Şahin et al. (1993) was used to measure the problem-solving skills. IBM SPSS Statistics v24 package program was used in the statistical analysis of the data. The normality test of the data was performed with Skewness and Kurtosis tests and in paired group comparisons, “Independent Sample T-Test” and in three and/or more group comparisons, “ANOVA” tests were applied, and to determine the direction of significance, “LSD” test from post-hoc tests was used. The significance level was accepted as 0.05. The mean scores of the students participating in the study from the problem-solving inventory are as follows; hasty approach 32.25±6.27, thinking approach 13.98±4.71, avoidant approach 12.47±4.85, evaluative approach 8.44±3.31, self-confident approach 21.01±5.67 and planned approach 11.11±4.21. The mean scores they received from the Emotional Intelligence Inventory in Sports are as follows; evaluating others' emotions 3.51±0.73, evaluating own emotions 3.76±0.91, regulating emotions 3.21±0.74, social skills 3.52±0.75 and using emotions 3.66±0.77. As a result, significant differences were found between the student's gender, age, family attitudes, and income levels and their problem-solving skills and emotional intelligence levels, and a positive moderate correlation was also found between both scales.