Clients who enter residential treatment for substance abusedemonstrate difficulties correctly identifying emotions inthemselves and others, regulating emotions, and using positivecoping skills to deal with their emotions. The purpose of the studyis to quantify the level of emotional understanding as well asother skills related to emotional intelligence among substanceabusers. Do substance abusers have a different level of emotionalunderstanding than the general population? The researchers used aconvenience sampling method to obtain a sample of 40 substanceabusers who have just entered residential treatment. Theparticipants completed the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso EmotionalIntelligence Test (MSCEIT) to measure their emotional intelligence.Note, the ability based model of emotional intelligence measuresfour branches: 1) the ability to identify emotions in facialexpressions, 2) the ability to use emotional information tofacilitate thoughts, 3) the ability to understand emotions, and 4)the ability to regulate emotions in the self and others. Thisassessment was selected to provide information on emotionalunderstanding and other abilities under the umbrella of emotionalintelligence. The mean score on the MSCEIT for the population is100. The null hypothesis states there will be no difference betweenthe scores on the MSCEIT for substance abusers when compared to thegeneral population. A single sample t-test was used to analyze thedata.
