A preliminary validation of the Arabic version of the "Profile of Emotional Competence" questionnaire among Tunisian adolescent athletes and nonathletes: insights and implications for sports psychology

Background: Emotional intelligence refers to how individuals deal with intrapersonal or interpersonal emotional information and how a subject identifies, expresses, understands, regulates, and uses his/her own emotions or those of others. The purpose of the present study was to validate the Arabic version of the "Profile of Emotional Competence" (PEC) questionnaire. Methods: A sample of 285 Tunisian participants (153 men and 132 women) was recruited, age range: 12-18 years (15.2 +/- 2.4 years). The participants were prospectively classified into the following two groups: athletes (n= 101) and nonathletes (n = 184). Results: Findings of the present study indicated that the Arabic version of the PEC questionnaire has good psychometric properties. The Cronbach's a suggested that all subscales had adequate internal consistency. Test-retest reliability was excellent. The correlations between interpersonal and intrapersonal subscales were low to moderate (from 0.37 to 0.59), except for the regulation interpersonal, utilization interpersonal, and utilization intrapersonal subscales, which showed negligible correlations with the other subscales. The two-factor solution (interpersonal and intrapersonal competence models) accounted for 62.1% of variance. All subscales loaded on the expected factor, except for the utilization intrapersonal and regulation interpersonal subscales, which did not yield a satisfactory loading. Age and athletes' status impacted on all the PEC dimensions, except for some subscales. Conclusion: Finally, psychologists and practitioners in the Arab world could use the PEC questionnaire as a valid and reliable instrument for planning ad hoc interventions.