Proceedings of The 3rd International Academic Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2021
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/3rd.iacrss.2021.06.87
Analysis of Emotional Intelligence and Health Perception of Abroad Students on an Island During the Quarantine
Turkmen Tore, Ceren Karaatmaca, Tutku Yurdakul, Semra Erbas
ABSTRACT:
Exceptional situations such as quarantine, curfew and closure imposed due to the epidemic may affect the emotional and behavioral situation of individuals. Even if the conditions caused by the pandemic are interpreted as similar or the same stress factors, this situation leads to different psychological effects in individuals. The changes that the pandemic brings to daily life and their associated effects may be associated with individuals’ thoughts and emotional abilities on health. The basic beliefs and schematic structures underlying health cognitions allow individuals to perceive, interpret and live the world as they are inclined. Emotional Intelligence (EQ), can be interpreted briefly as one’s recognition of one’s own feelings, understanding the feelings of others and managing their own feelings. In this respect, the fact that the person notices change in their emotions with their experiences also causes them to understand and reorient behavioral reactions. Increased social awareness and social skills with emotional intelligence, when working in a supportive way, cause individuals to react more functionally to stressful events and are likely to engage in supportive behaviors towards their environment. In this respect, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) plays an important role both in developing functional health cognitions and for the ability to better deal with health problems. In this research, it is aimed to determine the relationship between emotional intelligence and health cognitions as well as the sub-dimensions of health cognitions, and communication with the families of the students living away from home in quarantine in an island country such as Cyprus. This research is a quantitative and illustrative study designed according to the relational scanning model. The sample consists of 122 students. As data collection tools, firstly demographic information including the frequency of communication with the family in a week and the effects of corona virus on daily life are used. As the second data collection tool, the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Test Main Form is used. The third data collection tool is the Health Cognitions scale prepared by Heather D. Hadjistavropoulos and her colleagues (2012). For analysis of data as SPSS descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation test for the existence of linear relationship between subjects and multinomial regression technique are used for factor interactions. In the findings section of the research, data examining the relationship between emotional intelligence and health cognitions are analyzed with descriptive findings about the effect of corona virus outbreak on daily life of students who are studying away from their family on the island. When looking at the impact of the corona virus outbreak on daily life, it is seen that it is “noticeably” is the highest comment at 42.6%. Between the health cognition scale and the emotional intelligence scale, Pearson correlation analysis showed a negative, inversely significant correlation. (r= -0.186 and p=0.040 p<0,05) . Accordingly, when people’s emotional intelligence increases, their score on the health cognition scale, i.e., their health anxiety scores, decreases. When we looked at the relationship between emotional intelligence and health cognition subgroups, 3 different relationships were identified. A strong association was found between having difficulty coping with disease and thinking the probability of disease was high (p=0.023) and thinking that the disease was frightening, and the probability of disease was high (p=0.000). At the same time, an association is found between emotional intelligence and thinking that the disease is frightening (p=0.042). In addition, the inadequacy of medical services (p= 0.04) and difficulty in dealing with the disease (p=0.034) dimensions were determined as factors affecting the frequency of communication with the family when multinomial regression was used to determine the factors affecting the frequency of communication.
Keywords: EQ; Health Cognition; Quarantine; Family Communication; Multinominal Regression.