An item response theory analysis of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short-Form (TEIQue-SF) in the workplace

Trait emotional intelligence (EI) predicts important outcomes in the workplace. This study is the first one that reports item and scale functioning in the workplace using item response theory (IRT) analysis of the global 30-item Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short-Form (TEIQue-SF). Past IRT research, performed mostly on undergraduate English-speaking students, showed that several items in TEIQue-SF were poorly informative. Data collected in Sweden from 972 employed persons were analyzed. IRT with a graded response model was utilized to analyze items of the global TEIQue-SF scale. As was found in past research, the lowest response category in all items had extreme difficulty threshold parameter values, and only low and moderate levels of latent trait EI were adequately captured, but most items had good values of the discrimination parameters, indicating adequate item informativeness. Four items, which in past research have also shown weak psychometric properties, were poorly informative. To effectively measure trait EI in today's organizations, there is an advantage in using the most informative items to best represent this construct.