The mediator effect of digital game addiction on the relationship between perceived parental attitudes and emotional intelligence among adolescents

The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether digital game addiction has a mediator effect on the relationship between perceived parental attitudes and emotional intelligence. In addition, the possible effect of sociodemographic characteristics on research variable were alse examined. This study included 478 high school students between the ages of 14-18. The research data were collected over Sociodemographic Information Form, Digital Game Addiction Scale (DOBÖ-7), Parenting Attitude Scale (ABTÖ) and Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Scale Child and Adolescent Form (EQ-i (YV)). Research results indicated that the level of digital game addiction has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between adolescents' acceptance/involvement sub-dimension and emotional intelligence levels. In the second stage of the study, regression analysis could not be performed since parental attitude is a categorical variable. Therefore, ANCOVA analysis was conducted to see how the participants' digital game addiction and emotional intelligence levels were affected by parental attitudes. Results demonstrated that the relationship between emotional intelligence levels (corrected according to digital game addiction levels) and parental attitudes was found significant. In other words, the emotional intelligence levels of adolescents with democratic parental attitudes were higher than the others, and emotional intelligence levels of adolescents with authoritarian parental attitudes were lower than the other parental attitudes. Keywords: adolescence, parental attitudes, emotional intelligence, digital game addiction