Association between leisure time activities and emotional intelligence among school students in Kollam district of South Kerala

Abstract

Background: Leisure activity plays a key role in forming an individual’s physical and mental development. Both leisure-time physical activity and emotional intelligence (EI) are related to health-related quality of life. Objectives were to assess the EI of school children belonging to various boards and to find out whether leisure time activity has association with EI. Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken among 200 school students belonging to various boards of Kollam district. EI was measured using self-report EI developed by Shuttle et al for-data collection. Results: Among 200 subjects, 50 students studying in 9th standard belonging to different boards were taken from each school, 146 (73%) of students belonged to nuclear family, 154 (77%) shared their daily events with family. 109 (54%) choose arts as leisure time activity and 91 (45.5%) chose sports, 112 (56%) of the students spend at least one hour in social media and only 55 (27.5%) had a habit of reading newspaper daily. Significant statistical association was found between gender, type of school, sharing events with their parents, leisure time activity and EI (p<0.05). Conclusions: The study concluded that leisure activity has significant role in the developing EI of a person. It was found that the government (State syllabus) school children have better EI comparing with other boards and also the students who are good at arts also have good EI.