Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence Skills and Relationship with Students’ Academic Achievement

Introduction and Purpose: Emotional intelligence and critical thinking are both basic elements of achievement of success, especially when they are raised in education area and in medical education. Thus, it seems that the students with higher ability in critical thinking and emotional intelligence certainly achieve better academic achievement compared to those who lack such characteristics. Current research was conducted aiming at investigating critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills and relationship with students’ academic achievement in the last year of nursing in Zahedan University of Medical Sciences during 2016-

2017.

Materials and Methods: This research is descriptive – analytical research of cross-sectional type. Research statistical population included all senior nursing students of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (n=50), and total counting was used as sampling method. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) and Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI), which has already been used in Iran, were used to collect data. Therefore, their validity and reliability is confirmed. In this study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to determine reliability of the questionnaires. Reliabilities were calculated for the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (0.891), critical thinking questionnaire (0.924) and academic achievement questionnaire (0.883). In addition, in order to measure the academic achievement, GPA of two last semesters was considered as the criterion. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. SPSS (22) and Smart PLS software were used.

Findings: Findings showed that there is significant relationship between critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills and academic success of senior nursing students in terms of marital status. In addition, findings indicated significant relationship between critical thinking skills and academic achievement of senior nursing students. In addition, results showed there is relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement of senior nursing students.

Discussion and Conclusion: Considering significant relationship between critical thinking and academic success of senior nursing students as well as significant relationship between emotional