The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement among Students

This study investigates the relationship between emotional intelligence and its components with academic growth of students. This research is practical and uses descriptive and inferential statistics techniques to examine the hypotheses of this study. The data used in this study were collected using questionnaires. A self-made questionnaire was developed to collect personal and demographic data. Further, Sibria-Shrink's questionnaire was adapted to measure emotional intelligence and academic growth of the students. The study population consisted of 1829 students majoring in government and industrial management at the Islamic Azad University of Shoushtar. The sample consisted of 358 students that were selected using the cluster sampling technique. The analysis of the data using descriptive and inferential statistics (Pearson's correlation and comparing the averages) showed that: 1. emotional intelligence and its components correlate significantly and positively with the academic growth of the students, 2. The average scores of "motivation" and "self-control" components of emotional intelligence of the female students were higher than those of the male students, respectively, 3. The average scores of the other emotional intelligence components of the students did not differ significantly between the male and female groups, 4. the average academic growth of the male group and the female group did not differ significantly, and 5. general trends suggest that the academic growth of the students can be increased significantly by training them in enhancing their emotional intelligence.