Emotional Intelligence as a Correlate of Social and Academic Adjustment of First Year University Students in South East GEO–Political Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

The ability of passing through secondary school to the university level can be a stressful experience for many new undergraduate students. One of the challenges that they are confronted with is the need to develop their emotional intelligence and to adjust to the new environment. The present study was carried out to find out how emotional intelligence correlates with social and academic adjustment of first -year university students. A total of 200 first -year students from four functional faculties of education in federal universities in South-east geo-political zone of Nigeria with an objective to find out how emotional intelligence correlates with social and academic adjustment of first-year university students. The researchers applied Pearson product moment correlation in analyzing the data and for answering the research questions and Regression analysis for testing the two research hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results of the study showed that emotional intelligence correlated positively with social and academic adjustment of first- year students and that emotional intelligence significantly predicted first -year students’ social and academic adjustment in school.