The role of emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction in women’s quality of life: Structural equation modeling

Introduction: This study was conducted to investigate the relationships between emotional intelligence, marital satisfaction and quality of life and examine the role of emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction in quality of life for women. Materials and Methods: The current study was a descriptive-analytic research, which was carried out using the structural equation modeling technique. In this study, 248 married women working at the elementary level of education in Sabzevar city during 2016 were selected through simple random sampling and were evaluated using Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), Hudson Index of Marital Satisfaction (IMS) and World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire-BRIEF (WHOQOL-BRIEF). To examine the relationship between variables and to evaluate model fit, partial least squares approach was used in SmartPLS-2 software. Results: The research findings indicated that emotional intelligence is effective in marital satisfaction with beta coefficient of 0.285 (t=4.793) and in quality of life with beta coefficient of 0.545 (t=15.563). The impact of marital satisfaction on quality of life with beta coefficient of 0.373 (t=9.240) was also approved. Further, the structural model designed based on the relationships between emotional intelligence, marital satisfaction and quality of life could cover 55% of the factors affecting the quality of life. Conclusion: Based in the findings, it seems that emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction are among the effective factors in quality of life for married women.