Investigating the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Entrepreneurship Competencies of Third Year High Schools Students in the City of Langarod

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship competencies of third year high schools students in the city of Langarod in 2012-2013 academic years. The research method is correlation. The statistical population of this study includes third year high school students in the city of Langarod. The population consists of 409 members. A sample of 300 students has been selected from this population through simple random sampling method. The questionnaires of entrepreneurship personality characteristics and emotional intelligence have been used for collecting the research data. The first questionnaire has been developed and standardized by Kordnaeich et al. in 2007. They reported reliabilitycoefficient of the questionnaire 0.92 and its validity coefficient 0.74. On the other hand, emotional intelligence of Shiring (1999) has been used for measuring emotional intelligence. They reported reliability of the questionnaire 0.85 and its validity coefficient 0.63. In order to analyze the research data and test the hypotheses, SPSS has been used. The results of this study revealed that there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship competencies (r= 0.148, p=0.019). Another part of the results revealed that there is a significant relationship between self-consciousand entrepreneurship competencies (r= 0.152, p= 0.016). But any significant relationship has not been observed between self-regulatory and entrepreneurship competencies (r= 0.188, p= 0.083). In addition, the relationship between motivation and entrepreneurship competencies was significant (r= 0.557, p= 0.037). Based on another part of our findings, there is a significant relationship between empathy and entrepreneurship competencies (r= 0.222, p= 0.000). Finally, a significant relationship was observed between social skills and entrepreneurship competencies (r= 0.806, p= 0.016). Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship competencies, emotional intelligence, third year high school student