The present study was to find out how young children's daily stress and emotional intelligence develop and how young children's emotional intelligence develops according to young children's perceptions degree on daily stress.
For the purposes, follow...
The present study was to find out how young children's daily stress and emotional intelligence develop and how young children's emotional intelligence develops according to young children's perceptions degree on daily stress.
For the purposes, following research questions were set up.
1. How does young children's daily stress develop?
2. How does young children's emotional intelligence develop?
3. How does young children's emotional intelligence develop according to children's daily stress?
3-1. How do young children's daily stress and emotional intelligence develop when they encounter criticized-violent situation?
3-2. How do young children's daily stress and emotional intelligence develop when they experiene anxiety-distressful situation?
3-3. How do young children's daily stress and emotional intelligence develop when they hurt pride situation?
Participants for the study were 143 five-year-old children (69 boys and 74 girls) attending six classes of six public kindergartens in Daejeon. Their average age on the testing day was 5 years and 11 months (5 years and 11 months for boys and girls).
To measure young children's daily stress, the "Korean Preschool Daily Stress Scale (KPDSS)" made by Yeom(1998) was utilized. The "Emotional Intelligence Rating Scale for Preschool Children (EIRSPC, in short)" made by Kim(1998) was also used for measuring young children's emotional intelligence.
From collected data, means and standard deviations of daily stress scores under each stressing situations were calculated to know how young children's daily stress develops. Similarly, means and standard deviations of emotional intelligence's sub-scores were calculated in order to know how young children's emotional intelligence develops. To find out how young children's emotional intelligence develops according to their perceptions degree on daily stress, young children were grouped into 'Little Stress', 'Much Stress', and 'High Stress' groups using their daily stress scores, F tests and post-hoc Scheff? tests were then executed on daily stress scores.
Results of the study were as follows.
First, it was found that young children perceived little daily stress. Young children had highest level of daily stress when they encounter criticized-distressful situation, followed experience anxiety-distressful situation and hurt pride situation.
Second, young children's emotional intelligence scores were found to be higher than the average. The sub-factor means of emotional intelligence were highest in 'appraisal and expression of self emotion', followed by 'regulation of emotion', 'empathy', 'utilization of emotion', 'relationship between child and teacher', and 'relationship with peers'.
Third, young children's overall emotional intelligence according to children's perceptions degree on daily stress showed no significant group differences.
With regard to each stress situation, there's no group difference of young children's emotional intelligence by children's daily stress in the situation of encounter criticized-distress.
However, in sub-factors of emotional intelligence, significant group differences were found in 'appraisal and expression of self emotion', 'regulation of emotion', 'relationship between child and teacher', and 'relationship with peers'. (p<.05). Post-hoc tests revealed that these group differences in 'appraisal and expression of self emotion', 'relationship between child and teacher', and 'relationship with peers' were statistically significant between the groups of little vs. high stress (p<.05). But the group difference in 'regulation of emotion', was found by post-hoc tests to be statistically significant between the groups of little vs. much stress (p<.05). There's no significant group difference in sub-factors such as 'empathy', and 'utilization of emotion'.
In the situation of experience anxiety-distressful, young children's overall emotional intelligence and its all sub-factors showed no statistically significant group differences according to children's daily stress.
Also, in the situation of hurt pride, young children's overall emotional intelligence and its all sub-factors showed no statistically significant group differences according to children's daily stress.