Construction of Emotional Intelligence Scale for Handball Coaches in Iraq

Fouad Muttib Hussain^*
*Correspondence: Fouad Muttib Hussain, College of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Baghdad, Iraq, Email:

Keywords

Sport psychology. Emotional intelligence. Daniel goleman model. Handball Coaches.

CONSTRUYENDO UNA MEDIDA DE INTELIGENCIA EMOCIONAL PARA LOS ENTRENADORES DE BALONMANO EN IRAK

RESUMEN

El objetivo del presente estudio fue construir una escala de Inteligencia Emocional (IE) para entrenadores de balonmano en Irak. La IE es una medida importante del éxito. Hay muchas escalas de IE para medir la IE de médicos, jugadores, gerentes y personas comunes, pero se ha notado que había una brecha en la investigación de la Escala de IE para entrenadores de balonmano en Irak. La escala de IE fue para entrenadores de balonmano de acuerdo con el Modelo de Daniel Goleman (Goleman, 1998). La confiabilidad y validez de la escala se prueban a través de varias medidas estadísticas y se diseña la escala final.

Palabras Clave: Psicología del deporte. Inteligencia emocional. Modelo de Daniel Goleman. Entrenadores de balonmano.

Introduction

Many scientific disciplines in the areas of physiology (exercise physiology), psychology (sports psychology), anatomy, biomechanics (sports biomechanics), biochemistry, and kinesiology and others have been incorporated in sport. Team handball has received growing interest during the past decades. Handball consists of a group of players under the leadership of the coach. It is a game characterized by friction between the players due to the presence of 12 players in the court at close distances, as well as the technical preparation and organization of the team. All of this imposes a large number of events that face the coach.

The psychological aspect plays an important role in the personality of the coach and his/her ability to interact with the variables of the match. The coach leads the players and directs them according to his accumulated experience. And as such his/her behavior as such is affected by many variables during the matches. This includes but not limited to is the tactical or technical aspects, which can affect and be affected by the emotional aspects of the coach. One such aspect is EI which is an important component of the psychological aspects of the coach's leadership capabilities. The success of the coach depends on communicating with the players which is determined by the personality and experience of the coach and relationship with the team.

The emotion serves the technical performance during training or the match (Tiba and Nidaa, 2021), and this greatly imposes the need to determine the EI of the coach, and the way he/she deals with the players in all circumstances which requires him/her to make appropriate decision. Goleman believes that the nature of EI concept constitutes an obstacle to measuring it in an effective and objective way (Goleman, 1998). Therefore, as determining the coach’s intelligence is carried out by finding an appropriate scale to measure his/her EI, as the training experience differs from that acquired by a person who does not practice sports.

Goleman's model, was formulated according to performance theory (Goleman, 2001). To Goleman, emotional competencies are not innate talents, but rather learned capabilities that must be worked on and can be developed to achieve outstanding performance. Goleman believes that individuals are born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their potential for learning emotional competencies (Goleman, 1998). It has been reported that EI required be developed in order to reach higher levels of performance; whether professional or social (Hussain and Hussain, 2006). This coincides in agreement with what (Amjad, 2011) who mentioned stated that determining and measuring the level of EI could allow for its development by following scientific programs and organized and coordinated training for the sample that is under development. This applies to sports, especially handball coaches, as they are in a continuous process of performance and learning from one training level to another, and from repeated experiences of success and failure to another.

Therefore, constructing a scale to measure EI is expected to facilitate the process of assessment and measuring EI of handball coaches, and is an important step in determining the components of his/her personality and the possibility of developing their competencies. This will be positively reflected on the team's performance during performance in training and competition.

Methods

A descriptive approach based on Goleman (1998) was adopted to establish the proposed scale. Aljabri and Jawad (2021) stated that a descriptive approach is one of the forms of organized scientific analysis of interpretation to describe a specific phenomenon or problem and depict it quantitatively by collecting data and standardized information.

Participants

The research sample consisted of 198 Iraqi Premier League (IPL) clubs players were chosen in accordance with the intentional selection method. This number represents 87.6 percent of the total number of players in the IPL clubs in Iraq (226) as shown in Table 1 (Table 1).

Scale Procedures

Formulation of scale paragraphs (statements):

Formulation of the scale was constructed after reviewing:

1. The opinion of the IPL clubs players regarding the EI and its components.

2. The literature and previous studies.

3. The current measures that deal with the variable of emotional intelligence.

4. Goleman’s opinion on emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998).

Goleman Model includes five basic components. Three of which deals with the personal competencies i.e. understanding and managing emotions (selfawareness, emotional management, and self-motivation), and the other two deals with the social competencies, empathy and social relations (Goleman, 2000).

The study was formulated to include 65 items, with 13 items for each component, and adopted a five-graded scale to measure the responses of the players, and the expected alternative response were (always, often, sometimes, rarely, never) and relevant weights (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), respectively. All items of the scale were built to be positive.

A self-report method has been used to measure the emotional intelligence. This is in agreement with Anastasi and Urbina (1997) who stated that the self-report style is most appropriate approach to measure the emotional characteristics.

Scale Validity

Validity is one of the most important psychometric characteristics and basic indicators for any measuring tool or testing of a specific subject, to confirm if the scale has well achieved the purpose for which it was developed and to measure the trait that was prepared to measure and without being affected by other variables (Mustafa and others, 2000).

The scale was presented to a committee consisting of 10 specialized experts to ensure the validity of the paragraphs and their measurement of EI. Some paragraphs were excluded, others were amended. The paragraphs that obtained the approval of 8 experts or more were kept. This number was adopted as a criterion for the validity of the paragraph which represents percentage 80.44%, it is statistically significant between approvers and not approvers by using Chi-square at the level 0.05 and a degree of freedom (1). Thus, 10 items were excluded, and the total items of the scale were 55 items as shown in table 2 (Table 2).

Set up scale instructions

• The paragraphs should be easy and understandable.

• It ensures reassurance to the respondent about the confidentiality of the answer by not mentioning the name.

• It answers all questions and do not leave any paragraph.

Discriminatory Power of Phrases

The discriminatory power (DP) of phrases means the ability to distinguish between individuals who have a high degree of the trait and those who have a low degree of the same trait (Abdulhafez, and Mustafa, 2000). In order to obtain the DP, the data from the scale for the constructing sample, which amounted to 198 questionnaires, was emptied. Marwan (1999) stated that the steps to obtain the DP are summarized includes:

• Descending order of degrees.

• Obtaining 27% of the constructing sample questionnaires from the highest and lowest building sample questionnaires.

• Using the t-test for the independent samples and extracted the values of the discrimination coefficients for the emotional intelligence scale. Thus, the number of paragraphs of the scale becomes 50 paragraphs distributed equally among the five fields of the scale as shown in table 3 (Table 3).

The Coefficient of Internal Consistency of Phrases

Internal consistency coefficient was used to analyze the expressions of the scale and ensure the consistency of its paragraphs. So the correlation was found through Pearson correlation coefficient (r) between the score of each paragraph with the total score of the scale. This type of validity is interested in knowing whether each paragraph is going in the right direction with the scale or not. As well as ensuring the consistency of the scale paragraphs to measure the phenomenon (Allen and Yen, 2001). If the correlation coefficient increases; we get a consistency scale. Exclusion of the paragraph with weak correlation with the total score increases the validity of the scale. The results of 50 paragraphs were statistically significant (P<0.05). Correlation coefficients values for these paragraphs are greater than the tabular value at this level and its value 0.196.

It has also been found correlation coefficients between the degree of each paragraph with the degree of its field. Correlation coefficients were significant at the level of (P<0.05). So all the paragraphs are directed in one direction with their fields, as shown in table 4 (Table 4).

Abu Hatab (1973) pointed out that if the test or scale consists of several subscales, as is the case in the current scale, the method can be modified by calculating the correlation coefficients between the tests or sub-scales with the total score of the scale To ensure that the scale is more comprehensive,the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated between the degree of each field and the total score of the scale as well as the rest of the fields, as shown in table 5 (Table 5).

Verify the reliability of the scale

To verify the reliability of the scale, the reliability coefficient was calculated using the test and re-test method after 15 days from the first application. The reliability coefficient in this method reveals the reliability of the results provided by the scale over a specific time interval, the extracted reliability coefficient is called the stability coefficient (Odeh, and Khalil,1988). The reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.82, which is statistically significant at the level of (P< 0.05), as shown in table 6 (Table 6).

It was also resorted to calculating the reliability coefficient through the Cronbach alpha equation for the fields. Nunnly (1978) indicates that the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient provides us with an acceptable estimate in the most situations, and the reliability coefficients that range between 0.50 - 0.60 are considered acceptable), and the degree of coefficients ranged Reliability for the fields between 0.81 - 0.83 and the total score 0.85 for all items, and the results were all acceptable as shown in table 7 (Table 7).

Conclusions

It has concluded from the results of this study that

• The construction of the scale according to Goleman model is suitable for measuring EI of Iraqi handball coaches.

• The five alternative answers were suitable for the sample of players.

• The paragraphs were appropriate and easy when applied to get the answers.

• All procedures for constructing emotional intelligence scale were completed, and the total number of its paragraphs was 50 in its final form, distributed over the five fields as shown in Appendix (1)

References

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Abu Hatab, F. (1973). The scientific analysis of moral behavior, The Yearbook of Education and Psychology, Volume1, Cairo. p:104.

Amjad, Y. (2011). The effect of a training program based on the Daniel Goleman model on developing emotional intelligence skills among second-year female students, master thesis, university of Baghdad, College of Education Ibn Rushed. p:130.

Anastasi, A., and Urbina, S. (1997). Psychological testing, 7th ed., Prentice Hall. p:148.

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Allen, M.J and Yen, M. (2001). Introduction to measurement model, Waveland Press, Inc; 1st Ed, Illionis. p:124.

Marwan, A. (1999). Scientific foundations and statistical methods for tests and measurement in physical education. 1st Ed, Amman: Dar Al-Fikr for printing, publishing and distribution. P: 140.

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Odeh, M., Khalil, Y. (1988). Statistics for the researcher in physical education sciences, Amman. Dar Al-Fikr, for printing, publishing and distribution, p:195.

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Tiba, S., and Nidaa, Y. (2021). Analytical study of emotional balance for some fundamental skills in iraqi futsal clubs, Journal of Physical Education, vol.33, no.3. pp:59-72https://doi.org/10.37359/JOPE.V33(3)2021.1188.