PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF PETRIDES TRAIT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SCALE IN SAUDI ARABIA KINGDOM USING ITEM RESPONSE THEORY AND LATENT PROFILE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The study aimed to verify the psychometric properties of Petrides' trait emotional intelligence structure for university students in the Saudi community. The initial sample for analysis consisted of 250 students from Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, who completed the 30-item measure online via the Google Forms platform. The study confirmed the unidimensionality using a confirmatory factor analysis model and found it fit the data. It addressed the issue of local dependence by creating residual correlations. The study estimated the initial reliability of the measure, which was 0.727. After separating the items and persons the final sample was 165, the alpha reliability was .786 and person separation reliability increased from 0.630 to 0.815. Two items 9, 27 were excluded from the final construct. The range of individual differences in the measured trait was wide, while the latent trait was centered around zero, with most items located in the medium difficulty region. Two items, 1 and 17, were highly sensitive to emotionality across individuals. The study relied on classifying latent categories of high and low emotional intelligence and used the discriminant function of differences in performance on the measure items across the two groups. The items were found to be sufficiently discriminative, except for item 14, which suggests the need to either exclude the item or interpret the results cautiously due to its sensitivity to the highly emotional trait.