Methodology:
A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey to measure the emotional intelligence of medical students was conducted in the faculties of medicine of Al-Quds and Al-Najah Universities in Palestine from 25th April 2019 to 28th May 2019. The study protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Al-Quds University (79/REC/2019 ). Data was collected using the standardized, structured, validated, and reliable questionnaire of Schutte et al. (1998) presented in a nonprobability pattern via online Google Forms. The use of Google Forms provided several potential benefits, including speed and ease of data collection and allowing students to complete the test at a time and place convenient to them. The survey was shared via social media. The target population included undergraduate medical students and clinical residency students at the faculties of medicine in both mentioned universities. Reasons for exclusion were: being from a different university (other than Al-Quds and Al-Najah) and not having completed the form. The appropriate sample size for a population of 4620 ± 5 students was calculated using an online tool (http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm) with a margin error of 0.05 and confidence interval of 95%.
The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part contained questions about the sociodemographic characteristics of the student, including gender, marital and financial status, year of study in medical school, siblings studying medicine, place of residency, living with family, academic performance, and regret for studying medicine. The second part consisted of the 33-item scale introduced by Schutte et al. (1998), the Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT), in which responses are measured via a 5-Likert scale ranging between strongly disagree and strongly agree, scored from 1-5 respectively (except for three questions that were reverse-scored) . The SSEIT is the standard method used for measuring emotional intelligence (EI), and consists of four sub-scales: emotion perception, utilizing emotions, managing self-relevant emotions, and managing others’ emotions. (12) (13) (14). The test has a reliability rating of 0.90 for the overall emotional intelligence scale, which is reliable for both adults and adolescents; utilizing the emotions sub-scale alone has shown poor reliability. (15) (16) The questionnaire used was in the Arabic language, and its validity and reliability was confirmed through a previous study held in Al-Quds University and using exploratory factor analysis; the factor loading for all items exceeded 0.55 (0.59 to 0.78), and the Cronbach’s Alpha and Guttman split-half coefficients were 0.81 and 0.80, respectively. (17) The EI score for each individual was calculated by adding the score obtained from each answer in the questionnaire and dividing by 33, giving a summary value with minimum of 1 and maximum of 5. Based on this score, the respondents were ranked into three categories (low EI, moderate EI, high EI), shown in Table 2. (17)
Students were additionally categorized into levels defined according to their academic year:
Collected data were entered into Microsoft Excel 2013. Analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20.0. Analyses used in the study are as follows:
  1. Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) for demographic data.
  2. Means and standard deviations to answer the questions of the study.
  3. Comparison of means with t -test and one-way ANOVA.
  4. Pearson’s correlation to check validity.
  5. Cronbach’s alpha to confirm reliability of the questionnaire.