Examining the Interaction between the Big Five Traits and Social-Emotional Competence and Engagement in College Students 

Molly Spackman


Project Description

The present research examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and social emotional competence in college age subjects.Using the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) and the Social Emotional Competency Questionnaire (SECQ), this study tested the relationship between personality and social emotional competence. The findings indicated that there is no significant relationship between personality traits and social emotional competence in this specific population. Future research could aim to expand on this study and gather a larger sample in order to confirm or contradict these findings.

What Form will your Final Project Take?

I wrote a fifteen page research paper outlining my study design and results.

Who was supporting you in your work?

Santiago Mandirola PhD. We met in-person on a bi-weekly basis to go over my progress and discuss any deadlines or changes I would need to make.

Project Themes:

Research

How has this project has been impactful or transformative?

This project has allowed me to further strengthen my research design skills. I had never before conducted research on my own, so this was very transformative in teaching me more about the process.

What would you do differently? 

If I could go back, I would spend more time thinking about specific research methods and really determining the best approach to my question. I think that if I had spent more time doing that, my results may have been different.

Short summary of your experience:

I had a positive experience during my internship at PIPS Rewards in the fall and during my research study for the Lang Social Science Fellowship in the spring. I enjoyed learning more about research design and the various ways to approach different issues. My project was small in scale, but it allowed me to explore something I found extremely interesting that I may not have otherwise explored.