Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Salvatore Sinatra

Abstract

Military veterans may have constructive skills and abilities in emotional intelligence (EI) that assist in managing emergencies, crises, and relationships. However, according to U.S. government-employment statistics, the joblessness rate of military veterans is up to 400% higher than that of nonveterans. The paucity of research conducted on the relationship between EI and prolonged intense emotional experiences, such as those experienced during military deployments, lessens the abilities of these veterans to market their EI skills in the pursuit of employment. The purpose of this quantitative nonexperimental survey study was to observe, evaluate, and compare the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale scores of military veterans regarding combat or humanitarian mission experience. The research questions addressed whether military leaders with combat or humanitarian mission experiences score higher on EI tests than veterans without deployment experience. The Mayer and Salovey EI model, experiential learning theory, and general causation theory served as the theoretical basis for this study. Data accrued from 132 randomly selected military leaders, analyzed through an analysis-of-variance test and the Welch test of equality of means, indicated a significant statistical relationship between a combination of combat and humanitarian mission experience and EI scores, F(1, 59.506) = 38.062, p < .05. This result indicates that veterans with both combat and humanitarian mission experiences have increased EI scores when compared to veterans without combined combat and humanitarian mission experiences. All other hypotheses were statistically insignificant. The results may help veterans decrease the disparity in joblessness rates compared with those among nonveterans and may aid human resource managers to locate competent candidates for employment.

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