Development and Validation of a Forced Choice Emotional Intelligence Measure for Chinese Respondents in Hong Kong

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been an emerging topic for psychological, educational, and management researchers and consultants in recent years. Unfortunately, there have been relatively few empirical studies on EI conducted with scientific rigor, especially in Asia. A recent study clarified the definition of EI as a set of mental abilities related to emotions, and developed a self-report EI measure by demonstrating the relationships between EI and life satisfaction, job performance, and job satisfaction for Chinese respondents. To facilitate future EI research and EI-related human resource practices in Asia, we develop an alternative EI measure in this series of four studies using forced choice items. Scenarios with alternative responses showing different levels of EI were generated in the first study, and 20 items were selected empirically. In the second study, pairs of abilities were generated and 20 EI items were paired with various ability facets. In the third study, we examined the social desirability of the 40 items developed in the first two studies. In the fourth study, these 40 EI items were cross-validated. The results indicated that this forced choice EI-scale had acceptable convergent, discriminant and predictive validity using life satisfaction, job performance, and job satisfaction as criterion variables. We discussed the implications of our findings in the conclusion.