Dimensions of Social Skills and their Relationship with Empathy among Gifted and Talented Students in Malaysia

AbstractGifted and talented students have always be considered as individuals who are absorb with their own world. Nonetheless, as part of the living community, they are required to interact with their environments. Concomitantly, they need the necessary social skills and empathic understanding to live comfortably within the society. This study examines six dimensions of social skills (the ability to influence others, to manage conflict, leadership, and ability to be a catalyst for change, to bond with others, to work collaboratively, to work as a team and to communicate effectively) and their relationship with empathy among gifted and talented students in Malaysia. Two hundred and forty (male = 81, female = 159) 15-year old gifted and talented students participated in the study. These students were identified as gifted and talented by the Malaysian National Gifted Centre and at present are studying at the centre as full time high school students. Data was collected using Malaysian Emotional Quotient Inventory (MEQI) developed by the researchers. A survey method was used and data was collected during a school holiday program that they have participated. Findings from the study show that all dimensions of social skills correlate positively with empathy (p < 0.00, n = 240) and the r values are more than 0.60. This article also discusses the findings in relation to counseling provision for the gifted and talented

Reliability of self-employment intentions instrument among international students in Indonesian university

This paper examines the validation instrument used to measure the psychometric status of the self-employment intentions. Self-employment intentions are crucial to identify the university students in order to confirm their decision making. They are a questionnaire to measure graduation in university to start choice on their careers. This instrument is composed of 11 items and was carried out to 115 international students studying in one Indonesian higher education. There were 49 male and 66 female respondents involved in this study. The Cronbach's Alpha value was .94 which strongly suggest that the instrument has an excellent reliability. This study points out that self-employment intentions are suitable to be used by college personnel and counselors to examine and identify self-employment inten-tions among international students in Indonesian higher education. Implications for future study will also be discussed