Anxiety, Optimism and Academic Achievement among Students of Private Medical and Engineering Colleges: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Prior studies have revealed that emotional intelligence (EI) helps in managing the stress in personal as well as professional life. But the scope of the earlier studies was mostly limited to corporate sector and in the field of education they were limited to the stress in the school teachers. This study tries to find the correlation between emotional intelligence (EI) and occupational stress in the faculty members of private medical and engineering colleges, as the courses related to these two fields are considered to be the most stressful. The purpose is also to see if there is any organizational and gender difference in the two variables under study. Better stress management leads to better efficiency in any field of work. Hence it can be assumed that if the faculty members have better EI, they will feel less stressed and will eventually have better teaching performance especially when we talk about private colleges where the demand and expectations of the students, parents and management are very high. The present study revealed a strong correlation between emotional intelligence and occupational stress of the faculty members. It also revealed a significant difference in the EI of the medical and engineering faculty members with latter having higher EI but the difference in their occupational stress index (OSI) scores was insignificant. Gender wise difference on the scores of OSI and EI was also not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Advances in Management is the property of Advances in Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)