This research project aimed to increase students’ emotional competence, based on Emotional Intelligence and the effects of that on reducing stress and enhancing well- being.
This was done through the use of an online movement to music, linguistics and bodywork programme, that students could follow at their convenience, over a six-day period of 15 minutes per day. While the term stress is neither positive nor negative, the results of stress are of growing concern within our society and research indicates that four out of five students experience stress.
Coping with stress using emotional competence may offer the opportunity to simultaneously enhance well-being and in doing so could provide students professional, personal, and social benefits.
A total of 11 students in higher education participated in the project, one of whom did not finish the six-day period.
To measure stress and well-being the Perceived Stress Scale and the Flourishing Scale were used, as well as reflection questions on how they were feeling before and after the intervention, and one open question for additional comments.
Over the six-day period, participants’ stress decreased with a medium effect and well-being increased with a small to medium effect.
The data was analysed through JASP in descriptive and inferential information. AntConc was used as corpus linguistics, in other words, a study of language toolkit, for concordance and text analysis.
