Exploring emotional self-efficacy in College Students: A Study of Age, Gender, Academic Specialization and Socio-Economic Status

This study investigates emotional self-efficacy among college students at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, examining its relationship with demographic variables including age, gender, academic specialization, and socio-economic status. A sample of 150 students from three different academic streams (Arts, Science, and Commerce) was selected using purposive random sampling. The Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (ESES) developed by Beri and Jain (2015), which comprises 32 items across three domains-Understanding Self & Others, Using Emotions to Facilitate Thoughts, and Regulation of Emotion in Self & Others—was employed for data collection. Results indicate that the majority of respondents (37.3%) demonstrated above-average emotional self-efficacy scores, with strong positive correlations observed between the three domains and overall emotional self-efficacy. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed no statistically significant differences in emotional self-efficacy based on age (F = 0.858, p = 0.356), gender (F = 0.172, p = 0.679), academic specialization (F = 0.297, p = 0.743), or socio-economic status (F = 0.291, p = 0.883). These findings suggest that emotional self-efficacy among college students remains relatively consistent across various demographic characteristics, potentially reflecting shared educational environments and developmental stages. This research contributes to understanding emotional self-efficacy as a construct that may develop independently of the demographic variables examined in this study.