Emotional Intelligence and Its Relationship with Behaviour and Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Bachok, Kelantan

survey was carried out to ascertain the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and the behaviour and academic performance of secondary school students in Malaysia. A total of 100 Form 4 students of SMK Jelawat, Bachok, Kelantan were administered a questionnaire measuring the five types of emotional intelligence, namely, Self-awareness, Selfregulation, Motivation, Empathy and Social skills. In addition to the types of emotional intelligence measured, the students’ behaviour and academic performance were gauged using the same questionnaires. Cronbach Alpha values for all the items measuring behaviour and all the five emotional intelligences were found to be above 0.8 and deemed reliable. The mean values obtained for each emotional intelligence measured were as follows: Social skills (74.03), Self-awareness (73.58), Motivation (72.66), Empathy (72.53) and Self-regulation (68.10). All the emotional intelligences under study correlated moderately with their academic performance: Self-regulation (r = 0.533), Empathy (r = 0.529), Motivation (r = 0.463), Social Skills (r = 0.448) and Self-awareness (r = 0.406).When the five emotional intelligence factors were correlated with the students’ behaviour, three were found to be highly correlated while the other two only moderately. Social Skills (r = 0.724), While Empathy (r = 0.721) and Motivation (r = 0.718) were highly correlated with the students’ behaviour self-regulation (r = 0.697) and Self-awareness (r = 0.658) were only moderately so.