Resident Advisor General Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Personality Dimensions, and Internal Belief Characteristics as Predictors of Rated Performance

Abstract

Resident Advisors (RAs) have a significant hand in helping students adjust and thrive in college life. Given the importance of selecting high-performing RAs, this study sought to examine how well various measures of intelligence (e.g., general, emotional) in addition to personality and additional “internal belief” characteristics predict performance in the RA position, using hierarchical regression analyses. General intelligence, emotional intelligence, personality dimensions, and “internal beliefs” survey data were obtained from 36 university RAs. Performance data were obtained from self-reports by the RAs and also from 190 resident students rating their RAs. RA emotional stability, conscientiousness, and confidence in ability as an RA were found to be predictive of rated performance. Scores of emotional intelligence, but not general intelligence, were found to be significantly positively correlated with RA performance. However, emotional intelligence did not have incremental validity above the contribution of other measures. Implications for improving the current process of RA selection at colleges and directions for future research are discussed.

Resident assistant training design : a narrative analysis

“…Competence is a consideration factor for training design, and emotional intelligence theory is recommended to both predict success of Resident Assistants and to gauge their training needs (Jaeger & Casion, 2006;Wu & Stemler, 2008). Training is proven to be effective for productive behaviors (Murray, Snider & Midkiff, 1999) and less effective for addressing counter-productive behaviors, which are better managed in individual conversations with the paraprofessional.…”