Assessing Social and Emotional Competencies of Undergraduates: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess social-emotional competencies among Indian and Ethiopian undergraduates. A total of 400 (200 each) participants, with an equal number of 100 male and female were selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure from Punjabi University (India), and Wollega University and Ambo University (Ethiopia). The participants were tested with the Social Skills Inventory (SSI: Riggio & Carney, 2003), which consists of two super-dimensions, i.e. emotional competence and social competence each having three sub-dimensions: emotional expressivity, emotional sensitivity, emotional control, and social expressivity, social sensitivity and social control respectively. Obtaineddata were subjected to t-statistics. Significant mean differences in social-emotional competence were observed between the Indian and Ethiopian young adults;male and female samples of the two countries. The Indian sample was greater in Social-emotional competence than the Ethiopian sample. Similarly, male and female participants from the Indian sample were greater in social-emotional skills than that of the Ethiopian sample, except for emotional sensitivity with the female participants, where the mean difference was non-significant. Further explorations are recommended to consolidate or refute the result of the present study.