Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a critical competency associated with academic performance, professional success, and psychological well-being. This research was conducted to determine perceived parenting styles as a predictor of emotional intelligence among undergraduate medical students in Malaysia. This quantitative, cross-sectional study used a two-stage stratified cluster sampling design. In Stage 1, medical schools were stratified by sector (public, private) and selected with probability proportional to size. In Stage 2, students were randomly sampled by their year of study. A total of 358 undergraduate medical students from 30 medical schools participated. The instruments used for this study were the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) by Buri (1991) and the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) by Law et al. (2004). A cross-sectional survey design was employed. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression analyses. The results indicated significant relationships between parenting styles and EI. Authoritative (r = .389, p < .001) and permissive (r = .172, p = .001) parenting styles were positively correlated with EI whereas authoritarian (r = -.129, p < .050) was negatively correlated with EI. Besides that, the results also revealed that authoritative parenting style was found to be the significant and strongest statistical predictor of EI (β = .386, p < .001). The findings suggest that authoritative parenting was positively associated with higher emotional intelligence, which has implications for psychosocial and professional functioning. Findings are associative and generalisable to undergraduate medical students in Malaysian medical schools within the limits of sampling error and the achieved response rate.