Cross-cultural invariance of emotional skills and competence questionnaire between Portugal and Croatia

Emotional intelligence (EI) and its measures have been widespread across several countries and cultures and the need for valid and robust measures that could expand research on international settings is on the current agenda. This study aimed to assess the measurement invariance of a widely used self-report EI measure, Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ), in two cultural contexts (Portugal vs. Croatia). The ESCQ, a 42-item self-report EI scale which comprises three dimensions - Perceive and Understand Emotion, Express and Label Emotion and Manage and Regulate Emotion - was administered to 1,188 Portuguese and Croatian secondary students. The results showed that the ESCQ had satisfactory reliability and the three-factor structure was replicated on both country samples. Configural (χ² = 308.71, df = 220, p <.01; RMSEA =.030, CFI =.956, TLI =.948) and partial metric (Δχ² = 9.102, Δdf = 10, p =.522; ΔCFI = -.01, ΔRMSEA =.002) and scalar (Δχ² = 15.290, Δdf = 21, p =.083; ΔCFI =.001, ΔRMSEA =.006) invariances were supported across groups. This EI measure invariance cross-cultural study highlighted cultural particularities related to emotional competence in Portugal and Croatia contexts and contributed to bring awareness to the validity of cross-cultural studies in the emotional abilities field.