Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

Table 1 
Socio-demographic Characteristics of Hospitality Students by Cultural Group 
Frequency Percent 
Trait 
Eastern 
(n = 112) 
Western 
(n=154) 
Eastern 
(42.11%) 
Western 
(57.89%) 
Gender 
Male 
Female 
31 
81 
68 
86 
11.65 
30.45 
25.56 
32.33 
Age 
Traditional (18 – 24) 
Nontraditional (25 and over) 
95 
17 
147 
7 
35.71 
6.39 
55.26 
2.63 
Classification 
Unknown 
Freshman 
Sophomore 
Junior 
Senior 
3 
3 
3 
78 
25 
2 
4 
20 
49 
79 
1.13 
1.13 
1.13 
29.32 
9.40 
0.75 
1.50 
7.52 
18.42 
29.70 
The cultural backgrounds of students served as the independent variable in the study. Meanwhile, the 
dependent variables were the EI test scores of the students in the 3 levels; 1) Overall Score, 2) Level One Sub-scores 
(Behavioral Score and Knowledge Score), and 3) Level Two Sub-scores (Emotional Insight into Self Score, Goal 
Orientation and Motivation Score, Ability to Express Emotions Score, and Social Insight and Empathy Score. The 
determination of eastern or western heritage of the students was based on the ethnicity findings in the demographic 
data. Students were determined to be of an eastern culture if they indicated Asian-Chinese, Asian-Filipino, Asian-
Japanese, Asian-Korean, Asian-Pacific Islander, or Asian-Other. Students were determined to be of a western 
culture if they indicated Caucasian-North America, Caucasian-European, Caucasian-Other, African American or 
Native American. 
Table 2 shows the distribution of the EI scores of the students based on cultural group. Developers of the 
test provide three cutoff points for researchers: a score of 75 or below is low; a score of 100 is average; and a score 
of 125 or greater is high. One standard deviation away from the mean is 15 (Jerabek, 2003). As demonstrated in the 

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