1. Introduction

Family combine individuals through the bond of kinship. It gives roles to individuals in society that contribute to development of all individuals in the society. Benokraitis ^[2] defines family as “Family is a unit of two or more than two people who are related by blood, marriage or adaption and, when live together, form an economic unit and bear and raise children.”

A family also shares a common habitat and well defined rules for their interaction. Burgess &Lock ^[4] defines family as “A group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood or adoption, constituting a single household, interacting and intercommunicating with each other in their respective social role of husband and wife, mother and father, brother and sister creating a common culture.”

Mintz & Kellogg ^[8] defines family in these terms, “A group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adult of both sexes at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and one or more of their children or their own or adopted by the sexually cohabiting adult.”

From the dawn of civilization society is considered to be important to individuals in many ways. It contribute to his vocabulary and physical and emotional wellbeing. Ghani ^[6] classify family on the bases of linkage, relationship and composition. On the bases of linkage family may be family of orientation that is family in which an individual is born and grown up. It has major bearing on individual vocabulary, physical development and growth. Next is the family of procreation that an individual establish by marriage. It is called the individual own family. On the bases of relationship family may be conjugal of consanguine. A conjugal family is formed by a couple and their children. The children may be by birth or by adoption. A conjugal family is a nuclear family. When many nuclear families in which the core of the relationship is blood and live together form a consanguine family or joint family. In such family the head of the nuclear families are kins and the bonds between them are much stronger than between mates, i.e. husband and wife. While on the bases of composition Ghani ^[6] classify family as nuclear and extended family. A nuclear family is a small family that is composed of parents and their children only while extended or large families is formed by married couple along with their children, married children and grandchildren and sometimes near relatives of male lineage. In this family more than one generation live together.

Intelligence was considered from cognitive aspects initially. When Thorndike introduced the concept of social intelligence and Gardner personal intelligence, the foundation of looking into intelligence from multiple perspectives was laid down ^[7]. Peter Salovy and John Mayer were the first writers who originally used the term emotional intelligence in writing and initially defined emotional intelligence as: “A form of intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” ^[10]. Later on Daniel Goleman and Bar-On gave their definitions and model of emotional intelligence ^[3].

Bar-On ^[1] model of emotional intelligence consists of five abilities of an individual. Yvonne Stys & Shelley L. Brown ^[12] give these areas as follow.

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A look at these scales shows that the model measure emotional intelligence cross sectionally. It interlink social and emotional intelligence that determine how effectively we express our emotions. According to this model to be emotionally intelligent one has to be able to express himself, understand and relate emotions in others and meet the demand of daily life stress and challenges. In other words one must cope with personal and social changes and respond to immediate environment in a realistic way.

2. Emotional Intelligence and Family Structure

Research on emotional intelligence and family structure report mixed result. Ozabaci N. (2006), using the youth version of Bar-On EQ-1 report that family size has significant negative effect on emotional intelligence He found that as family size increases emotional intelligence decreases. The research further reports that no significant relation exist between family environments except family environment maintenance.

Barbar, K.L., Christensen, M.M., & Barchard, K.A. ^[1] found that there is no relationship between family size and emotional intelligence. However, they found that people coming from larger families have greater externally oriented thinking. The p-value for the study was .88. Barbra et.al further reports Murand ^[9], that his study reported a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and family size. But Murand ^[9] reporting Cherian (1990) and Blake (1989) who found negative relationship between emotional intelligence and family size.

While analysing these studies we come to the conclusion that the result of family size effect on emotional intelligence has not been consistent. Some found positive ^[9] correlation while others found negative (Ozabaci N. 2006) while other reported no relationship ^[1].

In order to address the question that whether there is a relationship between family structure and emotional intelligence the researcher forwarded the following hypotheses.

1. Family structure has no effect on emotional intelligence.

2. Number of sibling has no effect on emotional intelligence.

3. Procedure of the Study

The study is correlational in nature. It is descriptive study that explore the relationship of family structure and emotional intelligence. In order to explore the relationship a descriptive quantitative study was carried out using Bar-On EQ-1 and family structure inventory. The respondents were tenth grade students in different institutions of the Federal Capital Islamabad. The population of the study included class tenth students from 57 Secondary Educational Institutions of Federal Capital Islamabad from the urban area only. Names of the institutions were taken from Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education result gazette for Secondary School Certificate 1 & II, 2012. A total of 12 institutions out of 57 were selected equally for male and female randomly from all sectors through the software “The Hat”. The total population consisted of 8521 individuals from which 300 were selected randomly by using stratified random sampling. The selection from each cluster was done according to the formula provided by Kothari ^[5].

4. Instrumentation and Validity

The family structure inventory consisted of 23 items. It gave complete data of the people living with the student. It was prepared in consultation with expert in the field. To ensure its validity and reliability it was pilot tested on tenth grade students from the population but not included in the sample. Data about emotional intelligence of students was collected by using Bar-On Emotional quotient Inventory. It was developed by Reuven Bar On in 1997. It is a self -rating scale on five point Likert Scale. The responses are 1 = very seldom or not true of me, 2 = seldom true of me, 3 = sometimes true of me, 4 = often true of me and 5 = very often true of me or true of me. Various studies on EQ-I shows an internal consistency of Cronbach’s Alpha co-efficient ranging from .69 to .86 ^[11]. Shaista ^[11] further writes that,

“It test retest reliability as .85 and .75 after one and four months respectively (Lewis, Rees, and Hudson, & Bleckley, 2005, p.344). Numerous validation studies have been conducted since two decades. These studies report content, face, factorial, construct, convergent, divergent, criterion-group, discriminant and predictive validity. The result shows that EQ-i is a highly reliable and valid instrument.”In Pakistan EQ-I was validated by Shaista ^[11] in her research studies. She has validated 117 items of Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory.

In the present study the validated instrument by Shaista ^[11] has been used with the scholar approval. The EQ-I used in the study contained 117 items. So the minimum score on the instrument could be 117 and the maximum could be 585. A total of 55 items were positively scored and 62 items were negatively scored.

5. Result and Discussion

On the basis of objective data analysis was done to find the relationship of emotional intelligence and family structure and number of siblings. Result for family structure and emotional intelligence for the group statistics are given in the table.

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Result for Levene’s Test for equality of means and independent sample t-test are given in the table.

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No evidence was found in the emotional intelligence score not on any of the sub-scales between students coming from nuclear and joint families. (p =.761, t= .212, df= 253)

6. Number of Sibling and Emotional Intelligence

Result for the number of sibling and its relationship with emotional intelligence shows that number of sibling has no significant effect on emotional intelligence. The descriptive statistics for emotional intelligence are given in the table.

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While one way ANOVA result for emotional intelligence are as follow.

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The Post Hoc test result are as follow.

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From the mean score we can suggest that there exist a slight difference between the groups for emotional intelligence but the difference is not significant. (p = .159, F = 1.74, df = 3, 251)

7. Discussion

The study shows that family structure and number of sibling does not affect emotional intelligence. This is true for all the five sub-scales. This finding has been consistent with the study of Barbar, K.L., Christensen, M.M., & Barchard, K.A. ^[1]. The study also found that emotional intelligence is not effected by number of sibling. For all these finding the p-value is very high and are closer to the negative effect. This finding is inconsistent with the study of Murand ^[9] who found a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and family size but consistent with the study of Cherian (1990) and Blake (1989) that yielded negative effect. The decrease in emotional intelligence with increase in family size may be due to lesser interaction with elder. As the number of sibling increases interaction with parents and their supervision decreases, which may lead to decrease emotional intelligence.

Due to inconsistent result the matter require further investigation with wider sample and also considering the age difference of the sibling.

References

[1]	Barbar, K.L., Christensen, M.M., & Barchard, K.A. (2004). Relating Family Size and Birth order to Emotional Intelligence, UK; Western Psychological Association.
	In article		PubMed
[2]	Benokraitis., N. V. (1996). Marriages and Families, Changes, Choices & Constraint:Printice Hall New Jersey.
	In article
[3]	Betty, A. (2005). Emotional Intelligence Correlates with Exercise Attitudes:Unpublished M.Ed Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.
	In article
[4]	Burgess, E. W., Lock, H. J. (1916). The Family from Institution to Companionship:New York, The American Book Company.
	In article		PubMed
[5]	Kothari C.R (2004). Research Methods. Methods and Technique. New Age International. New Delhi
	In article
[6]	Ghani, S. (2000). Sociology of Family and Community. University Grant Commission, Islamabad.
	In article
[7]	Maliha, N., & Rehana, M. (2010). An Exploration of Emotional Intelligence of the Students of IIUI in Relation to Gender, Age and Academic Achievement,Bulletin of Education and ResearchJune 2010, Vol. 32, No. 1 pp 37-51
	In article
[8]	Mintz, S., Kellog, S. (1998). Domestic Revolution, A Social History of America Family Life, New York, Free Press.
	In article
[9]	Murand, D. (1999). Family Size and Emotional Intelligence revisited: the role of emotional intelligence. Psychological reports, 1999.84, 643-649 Pennsylvania state university.
	In article		View Article
[10]	Ozabaci, N. (2006). Emotional Intelligence and Family Environment, Turkey; Osmangazi.
	In article
[11]	Salovey, P., Mayer, J.D. (1990). Emotional Intelligence, Baywood Publishing Co.
	In article		PubMed
[12]	Shaista, M., (2012). A Study of Emotional Intelligence and Social Behavior of 11th Class Students, Unpublished Ph.D., Thesis, Department of Secondary Teacher Education, AIOU, Islamabad.
	In article
[13]	Yuonne, S., Brown, S. (2004). A Review of Emotional Intelligence Literature and Implication for Correction: Research Branch Correctional Services Canada.
	In article