Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress among Secondary School Teachers: an Analytical Study

The present study aims at studying the relationship between various dimensions of emotional intelligence and occupational stress of among teachers working in secondary schools of Jalandhar and Ludhiana districts of Punjab, India. Using a multi-stage random sampling method, a sample volume of 739 teachers was determined. Two main instruments were used to measure the study variables: a 80-item questionnaire by C R Darolia on emotional intelligence (five scales: Selfawareness, Motivating Oneself, Managing Emotions, Empathy and Handling Relations, and a 60-item Occupational Role Questionnaire (six scales: Role Overload (RO), Role Insufficiency (RI), Role ambiguity (RA), Role Boundary (RB), Responsibility (R), and Physical Environment (PE)) extracted from Occupational Stress Inventory Revised (OSI-R) by Samuel H Osipow, 1998. The pearson product moment correlation was used to establish the relationship. The study results revealed that a) Firstly, the emotional intelligence does not help in reducing the feeling of job pressures; b) Similarly being self aware, motivated and empathetic does not have any influence on the feeling of job pressure; c) teachers who are highly emotionally intelligent found to have clear understanding of the expectations from them, their priorities for job and evaluation criteria set for them. d) highly emotionally intelligent teachers are going to have less conflicting role demands and loyalties at the work setting; e) emotional intelligence is not related to taking responsibility for performance of others; f) highly emotionally intelligent teachers are less likely to perceive the settings of the schools as poor and working conditions as extreme.