Emotional Intelligence, Self-Regulation, and Children’s Well-Being in Fourth-Grade Students: Cross-Sectional Associations from Türkiye

This study examined the associations of self-reported emotional intelligence and self-regulation with children’s well-being among fourth-grade elementary school students in Mersin, Türkiye. The sample comprised 627 students, predominantly aged 9 to 10 years, from seven public elementary schools selected to reflect different district and school contexts. Data were collected in person after ethics committee approval, institutional permissions from the Turkish Ministry of National Education, and written parental consent. The Children’s Emotional Intelligence Scale, the Self-Regulation Scale, and the Stirling Children’s Well-Being Scale were administered. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, simple and multiple linear regressions, and a cross-sectional indirect association analysis using PROCESS Model 4 with 5000 bootstrap resamples were conducted. Emotional intelligence was positively associated with children’s well-being and self-regulation, while self-regulation showed a weaker positive association with well-being. Emotional intelligence explained 31.4% of the variance in well-being, self-regulation explained 8.6% when examined alone, and both variables jointly explained 31.9%, indicating only a marginal increase over emotional intelligence alone. Thus, most of the explained variance was accounted for by emotional intelligence, whereas self-regulation made a very small incremental contribution beyond it. The indirect association analysis indicated a small but statistically supported pattern of indirect association between emotional intelligence and well-being through self-regulation within this cross-sectional design; the association between emotional intelligence and well-being remained significant after self-regulation was included in the model. The findings suggest that emotional intelligence is the stronger socio-emotional correlate of children’s well-being in this sample, whereas self-regulation shows a limited complementary association. Given the cross-sectional design and reliance on self-report measures, the findings should be interpreted as correlational associations rather than evidence of causal effects, temporal ordering, or developmental change. Future studies should use longitudinal, intervention-based, and multi-informant designs to further examine these associations.