Psychometric Properties of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire: Factor Structure, Reliability, Construct, and Incremental Validity in a French-Speaking Population

Abstract

In this research, we investigated the psychometrical properties of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue, Petrides & Furnham, 2003) in a French-speaking population. In summary, we found that (a) TEIQue scores were globally normally distributed and reliable; (b) the United Kingdom four-factor structure (well-being, self-control, emotionality, sociability) replicated in our data; (c) TEIQue scores were dependent on gender but relatively independent of age; (d) there was preliminary evidence of convergent/discriminant validity, with TEIQue scores being independent of nonverbal reasoning (Raven's [1976] matrices) but positively related to some personality dimensions (optimism, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness) as well as inversely related to others (alexithymia, neuroticism); (e) there was also preliminary evidence of criterion validity, with TEIQue scores predicting depression, anxiety, and social support as well as future state affectivity and emotional reactivity in neutral and stressful situations; (f) TEIQue scores were susceptible to socially desirable responding; however, (g) TEIQue scores had incremental validity to predict emotional reactivity over and above social desirability, alexithymia, and the Five-factor model of personality. Such results constitute encouraging preliminary findings in favor of the use of the TEIQue.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Cécile Leroy is now at the ORBEM [Office Régional Bruxellois de l'Emploi], Brussels, Belgium. Preparation of this article was facilitated by an FSR grant from the Research Special Funds of the University of Louvain as well as a travel grant to London from the Belgian French-speaking Government accorded to M. Mikolajczak, and Grants 1.5.146.02, 1.5.123.04, and 1.5.175.06 from the Belgian National Fund for scientific Research accorded to O. Luminet.

We thank K. V. Petrides for granting us access to the United Kingdom data for the TEIQue Version 1.50.

Notes

¹The rationale underlying parallel analysis is that nontrivial components from real data with a valid underlying structure should have larger eigenvalues than parallel components derived from random data having the same sample size and number of variables (Hayton et al., 2004). The Marley Watkins program generates completely random data sets having the same sample size and containing the same number of variables than the real data set (up to 1,000 replications possible). Then it generates the correlations matrices for these data sets and provides their average eigenvalues. The researcher can then compare the eigenvalues generated from these random data sets to the real data set to ensure that the former are significantly lower than the latter.

²The congruence coefficient (rc) is an index of factor similarity. It is typically used to determine the factorial invariance of solutions across samples or studies.

³ Discriminant validity refers to the degree to which scores on a test do not correlate with (are independent of or orthogonal to) variables they are not supposed to correlate with given the nature of the construct.

⁴ Convergent validity refers to the degree to which scores on a test correlate with those on a test that is believed to measure a closely related construct (i.e., the two tests should end up ranking people in pretty much the same way).

⁵ Criterion validity refers to the ability of a test to predict some criterion it should theoretically be able to predict. Criterion-related validity can either be concurrent or predictive. Concurrent validity refers to the correlation between the predictor and criterion scores obtained at approximately the same time. Predictive validity refers to the degree to which scores on a test predict future behavior on a criterion variable.