There are three general ways to measure emotional intelligence: Self-Report, Other-Report and Ability measures. There is no right or wrong way to design such tests.  Each method has its unique strengths and limitations.  Let's take a look at each of these methods.

Self Report

Some tests use a self-report method. Self-report is the most common way to measure things such as personality traits. Personality traits include warmth, empathy, anxiety and so on. Here is an example of a self-report test of personality:

1) I often worry for no reason at all.
2) It's hard to fall asleep at night.
3) I feel down and blue a lot.

You would rate yourself on these items using a response scale such as this one:

Not True     Somewhat True     Very True

How do you know if you are depressed, or not, by answering these questions? In a well-developed personality test, we would have many more questions of this type, and we would ask hundreds of people to take the test. By analyzing people's responses, we would be able to determine what a low, average and high score consisted of. For instance, we may find that by answering one question Not True, one question Somewhat True and one Very True that this score is actually well above the average score. Such a series of responses would then indicate that the person with this profile may be depressed.

Self-report tests have been around for decades and they serve a very useful purpose. Such information is interesting and important, and early scales of emotional intelligence included the use of such self-report measures.  They are of value.  However, emotional Intelligence, conceived of as an intelligence, consists of a number of abilities or skills. A self-report test of skills provides information about a person's self-perceptions.  If you wish to measure a person's self-reported behavior, then self-report testing is totally appropriate.
 

Other Report/360-Degree Tests

If Emotional Intelligence is all about people skills, why not ask other people what they think of us? On the face of it, this seems to be a legitimate means of testing emotional intelligence. But let's take a closer look at this method, called Observer Ratings, and in human resources, 360-Degree Assessment.
Observers, let's say team members, are given a form to complete about you. Here are some examples of questions that they may be asked:

Is able to read people well.
Manages emotions effectively.
Understands my emotions.

You would rate the person on these items using a response scale such as this one:

Not True  Somewhat True Very True
 

One team member rates you Not True on all the items. Are you low in emotional intelligence? You certainly are, at least according to this person. But what does this person know about you? You see, their ratings of your behavior are based upon their own observations, as well as their own biases. They don't see you in all situations. They don't know how you think, or what you feel. Only you know that.

A problem with the 360 approach is that the observers which you pick may just not like you. They have an ax to grind, and they grind that ax to sharpen the pencil as they give you uniformly low ratings. Or, if you pick people who work for you, they are probably not likely to tell you, even anonymously, that they think your leadership style reminds them of Attila the Hun.

Are 360's useless? No! They provide interesting information about how other people perceive you. They can help to better understand social skills, management skills, and so forth. A 360 provides information on how others perceive our skill set.

Ability Tests

How do you determine whether you are skilled or not skilled? You test your skills. If you want to know if you can type, you take a typing test. A typing test does not ask you how fast you are, it does not ask a friend how fast you can type. It requires you to type.

Then Mayer-Salovey model of emotional Intelligence argues that emotional intelligence is a form of intelligence, and can be seen as a set of skills or abilities. Such abilities can be measured just like other abilities. An Emotional Intelligence ability test may have questions such as these:

A manager gives an employee unexpected negative feedback in front of other team members. How is the employee likely to feel?

Angry
Sad
Accepting
Happy

You would rate each emotion using a response scale such as this one:

Not at All      A Little      A Lot
 

Determining the Answers

That's great, you may be thinking, but what is the correct answer? There isn't one. And I'm not being flip with you, because there really isn't a single, best answer. There are answers to this emotional intelligence test item, some of which are better than others. Here's how we figure out the best answers.
Thousands of people take such an ability test. We then look at the frequency with which these people select each of the rating responses.

To score the ability test, we would compare your responses on the test to those of the thousands of people in the database.

We also take answers from a body of expert s, and use these data to score the ability test. This is the procedure that has been employed for decades in the development of many sub-scales of traditional IQ tests.

Is this a legitimate way to score a test? Absolutely! There are several reasons: 1) Emotions are often socially-determined; 2) some people are just "off" and mis-read the situation; 3) emotions have an evolutionary basis; 4) research suggests that a large group acts as an expert knowledge system; and 5) as an intelligence, expert answers make a great deal of sense. (This issue is discussed in several research papers.)

Our research suggests that consensus and expert scoring criteria are very, very similar, at least when a large enough group of experts are employed (20 or so).

WHAT IS THE MAYER-SALOVEY-CARUSO EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TEST (MSCEIT) ?

The MSCEIT is the result of several years of research. The MSCEIT, developed by Dr. Jack Mayer, Dr. Peter Salovey, and Dr. David Caruso, consists of a number of different parts. The MSCEIT measures the four branches of emotional intelligence, based upon the theory developed by Drs. Mayer and Salovey:

Identifying Emotions - the ability to recognize how you and those around you are feeling.

Facilitating Thought- the ability to generate an emotion, and then reason with this emotion.

Understanding Emotions - the ability to understand complex emotions and emotional "chains", how emotions transition from one stage to another.

Managing Emotions - the ability which allows you to manage emotions in your self and in others.

(Click here for more information on the MSCEIT.)
 
 
OBTAINING THE MSCEIT

The MSCEIT is available from MHS .