Emotional Intelligence as Determinant Of Potential for Academic Cheating Among Senior Secondary School Students in Ondo State

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between the components of emotionalintelligence and potential for academic cheating among senior secondary school students in Ondo StateNigeria. To this end, a sample of 180 (90 male and 90 female) Senior Secondary School 3 students wereselected. Two validated research instruments were used for data collection. They are Emotional IntelligenceScale developed by the researcher and the Potential for Academic Cheating Scale adopted from Hassan(2004). Data obtained from this study were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation andmultiple linear regression. The results show that there is an inverse significant relationship betweenemotional intelligence and potential for academic cheating. There is a significant relationship also betweensubscales of emotional intelligence and potential for academic cheating. Collectively, emotional perception,emotional integration, emotional understanding and Emotional management accounted for 58.6% of thevariance in academic cheating. Emotional management represents the most important role to reduceacademic cheating (-.462). On the other hand, emotional understanding and emotional perception are alsoimportant to reduce academic cheating (respectively = -.367, =-.187. Emotional integration cannot reduceacademic cheating in this paper. Psycho-educational therapy to teach all these dimensions of emotionalintelligence should be inculcated into the curriculum of secondary school students with greater emphasis onemotional management.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, determinant, potential, academic cheating