Emotional intelligence and personality traits as predictors of undergraduate occupational therapy students’ teamwork skills: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction This study investigated whether occupational therapy students’ emotional intelligence and personality traits are predictive of their teamwork skills. Method 114 second and third year undergraduate occupational therapy students (86.6% response rate) completed the Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory, the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, and the Team Skills Scale. Linear regressions were completed with the Team Skills Scale domains being the dependent variables and the Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory and Ten-Item Personality Inventory factors being the independent variables. Results Regression analysis results revealed that the Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory subscales of emotional reasoning and emotional management of others were significant predictors of students’ teamwork skills. Emotional reasoning accounted for 8.3% of the unique variance of the team skills variable ( p = .001) and emotional management of others contributed 2.4% of the unique variance ( p = .05). The personality traits of extraversion and emotional stability were also found to be significant predictors of students’ teamwork skills, accounting for 7.6% ( p = .002) and 3.6% ( p = .033) respectively of unique variance of the team skills variable. Conclusion Components of occupational therapy students’ emotional intelligence and specific personality traits were found to be significant predictors of their team skills. Further investigation of this topic is recommended.