The relation between emotional intelligence (EQ) and mathematics performance: a DEA-based approach

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is considered as an alternative issue in both fields of psychology and education. Studies that have been conducted in this area illustrate the role of EQ and its components in different aspects of one's life such as academic achievement, occupation, and social relationships. Turning to a view to academic performance measurement, mathematics is considered as a science which can promote the learners' ability in order to respond to the ups and downs of every individual’s life. Most of the previous papers have investigated the relationship between EQ and mathematical Performance. The main feature of those studies were focusing on statistical analysis. To deal with this issue, this study proposes an alternative procedure not only is interested in employing non parametric models, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), but also provides the statistical analysis to assess the questioned relation. The proposed procedure can serve as an evaluation tool for educational policy and students ‘promotion.  To do so, eighty-one individuals have been selected among Islamic Azad University (Yadegar-e-Imam Khomeini (RAH) branch) engineering students with simple random during the first midterm of academic year 2019-2020. Distributing a standard EQ questionnaire of Bradberry and Greaves [18] reveals EQ and its four components’ scores. The average of three completed math scores have presented mathematical performance quantity. The results of DEA point out no specific pattern between EQ and mathematical performance. The study also reveals that statistical analysis show a similar trend as efficiency analysis method did.