Rasch Analysis of Students' Emotional Intelligence; Implications for Vocational Education

Examining the emotional condition of vocational students is essential due to this population having a greater capacity to deal with academic difficulties and challenges. Students with good emotional intelligence have positive academic outcomes and future careers. Hence, this preliminary study was set out to explore and investigate emotional intelligence among vocational students in public schools. A total of 173 vocational students from Kupang City- Indonesia participated. The data were collected online using measurement instrument 13 items with validity ranging from 0.811 to 0.894 and reliability of .891. Using Rasch model analysis with Winsteps Version 37.3 software, this study finds that the level of students’ emotional intelligence in vocational public schools is in the medium category (57.80%) with an average respondents’ logit value of 0.87 (SD=0.56). Evaluated based on aspect, positive affective, emotion-other, happy emotions, and emotions-own are the dominant aspects that agree with students. This indicates that they have good abilities in this aspect. However, emotional and nonverbal emotions require further attention. This aspect has limited agreement from students, which shows that their abilities are still poor in this aspect. This study provides evidence-based recommendations for the development of more effective vocational education programs concerning promoting emotional intelligence among students.