An Assessment of Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Skill Usage among Professional Sports Players

The present study titled, 'An Assessment of Emotional Intelligence and Psychological skill usage among Professional Sports Players', was intended to explore the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Psychological skill usage among Professional Sports Players and understand whether age, weekly hours of practice and number of years played influence these variables. The objectives of the study were; to investigate whether there exists a correlation between Emotional Intelligence and Psychological skill usage, to investigate whether there exits significant differences in Emotional Intelligence and Psychological skill usage with regard to age, weekly hours of practice and number of years played. 80 professional sports players were examined. The tools used for data collection comprised of the Personal and Socio-Demographic Information Schedule, Emotional Intelligence Scale by Schutte et al and Test of Performance Strategies by Thomas et al. The tools used for statistical analyses were Pearson's correlation and ANOVA. Results indicated a positive correlation between Emotional Intelligence and Psychological skill usage. Significant differences were observed in Emotional Intelligence with regard to age and weekly hours of practice, also significant differences were found in Psychological skill usage with regard to weekly hours of practice and number of years played.