Measuring emotional intelligence of medical school applicants

Purpose. To discuss the development, pilot testing, and analysis of a 34-it em semantic differential instrument for measuring medical school applicants ' emotional intelligence (the EI instrument). Method. The authors analyzed data from the admission interviews of 147 1997 applicants to a six-year BS/MD program that is composed of three consortiu m universities. They compared the applicants' scores on traditional admissi on criteria (e.g., GPA and traditional interview assessments) with their sc ores on the El instrument (which comprised five dimensions of emotional int elligence), breaking the data out by consortium university (each of which h as its own educational ethos) and gender. They assessed the EI instrument's reliability and validity for assessing noncognitive personal and interpers onal qualities of medical school applicants. Results. The five dimensions of emotional intelligence (maturity, compassio n, morality, sociability, and calm disposition) indicated fair to excellent internal consistency: reliability coefficients were .66 to.95. Emotional i ntelligence as measured by the instrument was related to both being female and matriculating at the consortium university that has an educational etho s that values the social sciences and humanities. Conclusion. Based on this pilot study, the 34-item EI instrument demonstrat es the ability to measure attributes that indicate desirable personal and i nterpersonal skills in medical school applicants.