Original articleShort- and Midterm Effects of Emotional Intelligence Training on Adolescent Mental Health
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
Adolescents were recruited through several schools in three Spanish cities. A total of 479 participants (47.4% male) with a mean age of 13 (standard deviation [SD] = .87, range = 11–16) years were involved in this project. The population was selected by multiple-step, simple random sampling. First, location was taken into account, and then at least two different schools within each city were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. A total of 322 adolescents (51.6% male) with a
Descriptive analyses
Table 2 summarizes the means and SDs at each time (pretest, posttest, and follow-up) for the trained and control groups.
Main analysis
After controlling for age and for the pretest differences between trained and control groups, the multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the multivariate main effects for condition (trained vs. control group) Wilks lambda [18,449] = .905, p = .0001; η2 = .095 and for sex Wilks lambda [18,449] = .883, p = .0001; η2 = .12 were statistically significant. The interaction
Discussion
Findings from this study showed evidence that our EI training program, based on the ability model of EI [5], is effective at promoting several skills related to mental health in adolescents. If promoting mental health means decreasing the incidence of several risk factors and behavioral disorders in the young population [31], then the present study suggests that our evidence-based training enhances adolescent mental health by decreasing negative affect scores and several clinical symptoms,
Acknowledgments
This research was partially funded by project SEJ-03036 of the Spanish Department of Education and Science.
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