Gender and Emotional Intelligence as Predictors of Adolescent Problems

This paper examines male and female adolescents' current problems, broadly divided in four categories: home, school, social and self and studies the gender differences. It also studies the relationship of emotional intelligence with adolescent problems. It was hypothesized that emotional intelligence will be inversely correlated with youth problems and male adolescents and female adolescents will not differ significantly on family problems, school/college problems, social problems and personal problems. To test these hypotheses, an incidental sample of 77 males and 59 female (n=136) students (age- 16 to 21 yrs) were administered with Verma's Youth Problem Inventory (YPI) and Chaddha's Emotional Intelligence Test (EIT). The data were analyzed using the Pearson product moment correlation, point bi-serial correlation, multivariate stepwise regression analysis and the independent samples t-test. It was found that gender and adolescent problems were negatively correlated (rp,bis = -.34, p<.01), thereby implying that female students experience less problems than male students. Emotional intelligence (EI) was also negatively correlated with youth problems (r = -.29, p<.01), indicating that as EI increases, youth problems decrease. Gender was a stronger predictor for youth problems than emotional intelligence. The results are discussed in the light of the present Indian scenario about the youth.