Development and Validation of Social Intelligence Scale for University Students

The present research was undertaken to develop and validate the social intelligence scale. Attributes of social intelligence were elicited from 35 university students. After empirical validation, 431 university students were asked to rate themselves on the 98 item on a 4-point scale. Factor analysis revealed five factors namely; Social Manipulation (SM), Social Facilitation (SF), Social Empathy (SE), Extroversion (E), and Social Adaptability (SA). SM and SA appeared to be the two ends of social skills judged to be negative and positive. SM comprising rather devious set of items used to exploit others for selfish ends. SA represented honest and sincere interaction with others resulting in mutual benefit. SF was positively related to SE and SA whereas SM was not. Extroversion correlated highly with all factors. Construct validity was established with the help of Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-On, 1997) and test retest reliability was also found to be satisfactory. The findings are discussed in terms of the factor structure and function of SI in the context of the culture.