Social Emotional Health with Self-Awareness Predicts First-Year College Student Success
Abstract
Academic success depends on social emotional health, especially in the transition to college. The Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS; Furlong, You, Shishim & Dowdy, 2016) and the College Student Behavior Checklist (CSBC) are measured in first-year college students. The SEHS is a measure of co-vitality that includes belief-in-self, belief-in-others, emotional competence, and engaged living. Self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management parallel these SEHS factors in Goleman’s original model of emotional intelligence (1995, 2001). In the present study, the SEHS is predicted by the CSBC and by self-awareness of future grades. The CSBC includes a primary component that is a set of successful first-year college student behaviors called College Vitality (CV). CV includes asking for help from professor and from peers, reassessing study habits, going to office hours, studying in a group, speaking up in class, planning more, reading before attending class, going to tutoring and testing centers, and being aware of grades. Up to 50% of the variance in first semester GPA is predicted by self-awareness of future grades which is correlated with both the SEHS and the CSBC. College students must rely on both academic and emotional intelligence when making the transition from high school. In the present research, first-year undergraduates are asked to report their emotional intelligence and tendency to utilize good college student behaviors in order to predict academic success in their first semester grades. The present study introduces a set of questions about good college student behaviors. The College Student Behavior Checklist (CSBC) is a set of novel scenarios measuring "is this like me" questions. Socio-emotional health as measured by the SEHS (Furlong, You, Shishim, Dowdy, 2016) which has been shown to predict learning uniquely over and above academic predictors like GPA. In the present study, college vitality as measured by the SEHS, CSBC and grade awareness will be a reliable predictor of grades. Models of emotional intelligence College vitality is predicted to have a similar structure to the original Goleman theory of emotional intelligence (1995, 2001). Goleman’s theory is compared to a more modern and psychometrically-strong co-vitality model by Furlong and his colleagues.