Description
MSCEIT
The MSCEIT yields a total ability EI score and scores for each of the four ability EI branches. There are two
additional area scores that summarize the four branches: Experiential EI, consisting of the Perceiving Emotions
and Facilitating Thought branches, and Strategic EI, which includes the branches of Understanding Emotions
and Managing Emotions. Further, performance scores are computed for each of the eight tasks (2 per branch),
although the focus is typically on total ability EI and the four branch scores in research. The MSCEIT has a total
of 141 items and can be administered in 30 to 45 minutes.
The MSCEIT offers general consensus and expert consensus scoring options, which yield very similar results.
In consensus scoring, individual item responses are compared to those of the normative sample. MSCEIT scores
based on consensus scoring are computed as empirical percentiles with an average of 100 and a standard devia-
tion of 15. Similarly, the expert consensus scoring option uses the averaged responses of 21 emotions experts as
the correct criterion. Across the MSCEIT’s total, area, branch, and task scores, correlations between expert and
consensus rating range between .93 to .99 ( Mayer et al., 2002 ).
MSCEIT-YV
The MSCEIT-YV is currently being developed and thus only available for research. The scale structure of the
MSCEIT-YV is the same as that for the adult version. The MSCEIT-YV has 184 items and therefore a longer
administration time in its present state.
Sample
MSCEIT
The normative data comes from over 5000 respondents at over 50 research sites, with an unspecified
majority from the U.S. The sample included individual s of both genders (52.0% female, 10.7% unreported)
and the majority of respondents were under the age of 30 years ( M524.13, SD59.89, range: 17 /C079).
The ethnic classifications of White ( 58.6%), Asian (26.4%), Black (5.4%), and Hispanic (4.9%) were unevenly
represented. Although a large percentage of the sam ple had college or university experience, including
some with Masters degrees or higher, there were so me who had graduated from high school or elementary
school only.
As the authors recommend general consensus score s for most samples, normative data will be reported
for this scoring method. The sample had a total ability EI raw score of .51 ( SD5.06) and branch raw scores
of .52 ( SD5.10) for Perceiving Emotions, .48 ( SD5.08) for Facilitating Thought, .55 ( SD5.08) for
Understanding Emotions, and .45 ( SD5.08) for Managing Emotions (raw scores have a theoretical range of
0 to 1). Both area scores had a mean of .50 and a standard deviation of .07. All scores had a negative skew
close to 1.
MSCEIT-YV
There is little information available so far on the standardization sample and psychometric properties of the
youth version (see Papadogiannis, Logan, & Sitarenios, 2009 ). In a sample of 102 U.S. elementary and middle
school students (mean age: 10.25 years, SD51.29; 41% male), a total ability EI standard score of 93.62
(SD515.94) and branch standard scores of 87.25 ( SD519.66) for Perceiving Emotions, 97.53 ( SD516.97) for
Facilitating Thought, 91.08 ( SD515.10) for Understanding Emotions, and 96.43 ( SD515.01) for Managing
Emotions were reported. The area scores were 92.15 ( SD517.51) for Experiential EI and 93.08 ( SD515.04) for
Strategic EI ( Windingstad et al., 2011 ).
Reliability (MSCEIT)
Internal Consistency
Due to item heterogeneity, the MSCEIT uses the split-half coefficients as a measure of internal consistency at
the total, area, and branch levels; Cronbach alpha coefficients are used for the eight subtest scores, as these have
homogeneous items. The general consensus scoring method has produced slightly higher split-half coefficients
(those for expert scoring are reported in parentheses): .93 (.91) for total EI, .91 (.90) for Perceiving Emotions,
.79 (.76) for Facilitating Thought, .80 (.77) for Understanding Emotions and .83 (.81) for Managing Emotions.385 ABILITY EI MEASURES
III. EMOTION REGULATION