E-Motions : Assessing Emotional Quotient Of Adolescents During Pandemic

The coronavirus COVID 19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and greatest challenge we have faced since world war two. This study aims to assess the Emotional quotient of adolescents during pandemic by studying the affect on each attribute of Emotional Intellegence and also to study the reason behind the decreased elements of emotional intelligence during Pandemic. The study of this project started with two surveys. In first Survey, the child had to assess whether the pandemic has had positive/negative/no impact on him/her in the respective areas by comparing with pre-lockdown experiences. Second Survey was conducted for Parents. The test was for measuring Emotional Intelligence of their children with regards to the coronavirus pandemic Both the survey were conducted on Google Forms with more than 150 responses from students of grade 10 to grade12 studying in Delhi NCR and their parents.. The results of all the surveys suggests that all attributes of Emotional Intelligence have shown increase except one major attributeSelf Regulation, which has undergone a decrease during pandemic. Some elements like Commitment, diversity, Communication have deceased during these crucial times. But adolescents have been able to navigate their emotions well during this tough times. Increased levels of empathy, optimism shows that this pandemic has opened our hearts, made us more sensitive to others and our environment. Key Words; Adolescents, Pandemic, Behaviour, Self-Regulation, Empathy


Introduction:
The coronavirus COVID 19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and greatest challenge we have faced since world war two. But the pandemic is much more than a health crisis , it is an unprecedented emotional crisis.
It has affected millions of lives worldwide, not only physically but also emotionally in the form of panic attacks, obsessional behavior, anxiety, and fear. Malbehavior has been appeared such as selfishness and storing goods which affected social cohesion and national income.

What is the relation between Adolescence and Emotions?
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood. Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years, but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end later.
Stressors experienced during this crucial developmental stage may affect the trajectory of this neural maturation and contribute to the increase in psychological morbidities, such as anxiety and depression, often observed during adolescence.
In addition to depression or anxiety, adolescents with emotional disorders can also experience excessive irritability, frustration or anger. Symptoms can overlap across more than one emotional disorder with rapid and unexpected changes in mood and emotional outbursts.

What is Emotional Intelligence?
When it comes to happiness and success in life, emotional intelligence matters just as much as intellectual ability.
The very root of the word emotion is moterre, the latin verb " to move"plus the prefix "e" to connote "move away", suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act , the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. (Goleman,2013) Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand, use and manage your emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. People with high degree of Emotional Intelligence know what they are feeling, what their emotions mean and how these emotions can affect other people. (Salovey and Mayer,1990) For most people, Emotional Intelligence(EQ) is more important than one's intelligence(IQ) in attaining success in their lives and careers. High IQ can predict high scores, a high EQ can predict success in social and emotional situation. As individuals our success and success of the profession today depend on our ability to read other people's signals and react appropriately to them. .(Goleman,2013) Therefore, each one of us must develop the mature Emotional Intelligence skills required to better understand, empathize and negotiate with other peopleparticularly as the economy has become more global. Otherwise, success will elude us in our lives and careers What are the various attributes of Emotional Intelligence?
As per Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence has five attributes; 1.1 Self Awareness: The ability to recognize an emotion as it "happen" is the key to our EQ. Developing self awareness requires tuning into your true feelings. The major elements of self awareness are;  Emotional Awareness: Our ability to recognize our emotions and their effects.
 Self Confidence: Sureness about our self worth and capabilities  Self Awareness: Our ability to know ourselves better, our likes and dislikes, what job to take, whom to marry.

Self Regulation:
We experience only six major emotions-anger, sadness, fear, happiness, surprise and disgust. We often have little control over when we experience emotions. But we can however, have some say in how long an emotion will last such as anger, anxiety etc. Self Regulation involves: 

Methodology:
The study of this project started with contrasting behaviour of two students during Online classes in this Covid era.

Case Study-1:
'X', student of grade 10, was brilliant in studies, very disciplined, sincere, punctual, respectful and polite. During lockdown, school organised a Global Webinar on Zoom. It was attended by more than thousand students and teachers. Student 'X' also registered for the same but with a pseudonym. He gave his name as 'y', a student of his own class.
As the webinar started, he typed abusive words for school heads, showing identity as student'Y' in the chat box which everyone read. All were shocked to see them. After lot of efforts, it was traced that student 'X' had written all those abusive messages.
Student 'X' was called to school to accept his mistake. But he was not ready to accept it. After a thorough interrogation, he however confessed.
The question arises, why a child who was academically brilliant, had no prior discipline issues and was very polite in his conduct would indulge in something that could count as Cybercrime.

Case Study-2:
'A', student of grade 9, was introvert, had high IQ, remained busy in his books, disciplined and sincere. During lockdown, when all classes were taken online by teachers, someone played music repeatedly interrupting the class again and again for days in continuation.
After lot of efforts of tech department and thorough investigation, student 'A' name was revealed. Initally he did not admit of commiting this mistake but later confessed.
Again the question arises, why a introvert child, who had no prior complaints against him could commit such a mistake.
The above two incidents made me wonder why students who according to school were brilliant in their studies, very disciplined, sincere, respectful were involved in such acts of immorality.
When spoken to both of them, they had no concrete reasons behind their actions.

Survey:
First Survey was conducted to measure Emotional Intelligence of students with regards to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent changes in the educational pattern . The child had to assess whether the pandemic has had positive/negative/no impact on him/her in the respective areas by comparing with pre-lockdown experiences.
The survey had 20 multiple choice questions related to different attributes of Emotional Intelligence and was conducted on Google Forms.
Survey had more than 150 responses from students of grade 10 to grade12 studying in Delhi NCR.
Second Survey was conducted for Parents. The test was for measuring Emotional Intelligence of their children with regars to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent changes in their educational pattern. The parents had to assess whether they have observed positive/negative/no change in the child during lockdown by comparing their current behavioural and mental attributes with their pre-lockdown counterparts.
The survey had 20 multiple choice questions to be answered by parents and was conducted on Google Forms.
Survey had more than 50 responses from parents of adolescents.

2)
In order to study the reason behind the decreased elements of emotional intelligence during Pandemic, a survey with open ended question was given to 100 adolescents.
Their answers were tabulated to assess the reasons behind the decreased emotional intelligence.

Observations and Analysis:
As each question of the survey was related to a particular element of a Attribute of Emotional Intelligence, hence percentage increase / decrease/ no change was tabulated.
Mean increase/decrease/ no change percentage for each Attribute was then calculated for students and parents separately and then together.

Self Awareness:
By students:

Self Regulation:
By Students:

Figure 4:Percentage change in various elements of Self Regulation in students
By Parents:

Self Motivation:
By Students:

Figure 7:Percentage change in various elements of Self Motivation in students
By Parents:

Social Awareness:
By Students:

Figure 11: Percentage change in various elements of Social Awareness in students as observed by parents
By Students and Parents Together:

Social Skills:
By Students:

Figure 13:Percentage change in various elements of Social Skills in students
By Parents:

Figure14: Percentage change in various elements of Social Skills in students as observed by parents
By Students and Parents Together:

Interpretation:
As the Questionaire survey contained questions related to various attributes of Emotional Intelligence, data in % was Statistically Analysed using Mean Descriptive Statistics.

Self-Awareness:
I) According to 56.7% students and 50.5% parents, Emotional Awareness of students increased during pandemic.
II) According to 53.6% students and 50% parents, there was an increase in Self-Assessment.
III) According to 56.4% students and 59.7% parents, there was increase in Self Confidence of Adolescents.
Overall there was an increase in Self Awareness by 55.5%

Self-Regulation:
I) According to 51.1% students and 55% parents, Trustworthiness decreased during pandemic.
II) According to 46.4% students and 54% parents Adaptability showed upward trend during these tough times.
III) 48.7% students and 50% parents reported increase in Conscientiousness.
IV) According to 55.4% students and 50.5% parents reported upward trend for Innovativeness.
V) According to 60% students and 58.9% parents there was decrease in Self Control.
Overall there was a decrease in level of Self-Regulation.

Self-Motivation:
I) According to 52.9% students and 55.2% parents reported increase in levels of Achievement.
II) According to 49.6% students and 48.6% parents, there was decrease in levels of Commitment.
III) 54.7% students and 50% parents showed increase in levels of taking Initiative.
IV) Levels of Optimism showed upward trend by 51.4% students and 56% parents.
Overall there was a increase in levels of Self-Motivation by 49.4%

Social Skills:
I) 44.2% students and 46.9%parents showed decrease in levels of Communication.
II) 55.3% students and 58% parents showed increase in Leadership during pandemic. III) 60.3% students and 63.5% parents reported increase in Building Bonds.
IV) 58.6% students and 53.3% parents reported increase in Conflict Management.
V) 58.8% students and 60.5% parents agreed to increase in Team Coagulation.
Overall there was an increase in Social Skills by 53%.

Social Awareness:
I) according to 58.4% students and 52.5% parents there was increase in Empathy.
II) 47.4% Students and 48.5% parents reported decrease in levels of Diversity.
Overall there was an increase in Social Awareness by 50.8%.

Result and Discussion:
From above interpretation, it is shown that during pandemic, all attributes of Social Intelligence have shown increase except one major attribute-Self Regulation. It has undergone a decrease during pandemic. Elements of Self Regulation ; Trust worthinesss and Self Control have decreased of an individual.
One Element of Self-Motivation: Commitment has also deceased during these crucial times. Levels of Communication, Element of Social Skills has shown downward trend. Element of Social Awareness ; Diversity has decreased during pandemic.
From Survey-2, reasons for decreased Self Control, Trustworthiness, Communication, Commitment and Diversity among adolescents are following; 1) Health issues of self or loss of near and dear ones 2) Decreased socialization and decreased sports activity 3) Financial problems or loss of job of parents 4) New work adaptation 5) New normal at home 6) Uncertainty of future

Conclusion:
The Covid-19 pandemic is proving to be the greatest test of Emotional Intelligence among adolescents. These trying days of the pandemic have highlighted the importance of adolecent's Emotional Intelligence. Future uncertainty, stress, anxiety, home schooling, getting used to new forms of communication are all testing them in different ways. Though adolescents need to improve their self control, Communication, Commitment and Diversity, some of the very important attributes of our emotions, they have been able to navigate their emotions well during this tough times. Increased levels of empathy, optimism shows that this pandemic has opened our hearts, made us more sensitive to others and our environment. Increased levels of Achievement, Initiative and Innovativeness proves that adolescent's did get new ways to show their abilities, which indirectly helped in increasing their self confidence.

Acknowledgement:
This paper is an output of a study done to understand the changes in emotions of adolescents during this unprecedented time. I would like to thank the teachers, staff, and students of the senior wing of my school who all contributed to the study. I cannot forget to mention the parents of these students who were always ready to share behavioural experiences of their ward with me, which was of great help in my project.
I would also want to thank my son and my sister who motivated and helped me in numerous ways, be it in writing the paper or just by being there for me for the entirety of this 'experiment.'