Philippine Journal of Psychology

December 2003, Vol. 36, No. 2

Special Issue on Adolescent Psychology
Special Issue Editor: Ma. Emma Concepcion D. Liwag

Contents

Research on Adolescent Development in the Philippines: A Review and Evaluation of the Past Two Decades
Liane Peña-Alampay, Alma S. de la Cruz, and Ma. Emma Concepcion D. Liwag

Adolescents comprise 30% of the Philippine population, and are directly implicated in the country's development prospects. However, adolescence, as a developmental period, has been treated unsystematically and virtually neglected in Philippine psychology research (Ventura, 1981). While this situation has changed in recent years, the extent to which research on Filipino adolescents has grown remains undetermined. This review addresses the gap by providing a comprehensive evaluation of the status of research on Filipino adolescent development from 1983 to the present. A total of 147 scholarly published and unpublished papers were examined in terms of their themes, bibiographic features (i.e., year published/completed; source of report), sampling characteristics (i.e., participants' age, gender, SES, study setting, sampling size and method), and methodological elements including research objectives, design and procedures. The results indicate that adolescence research has indeed grown exponentially since the early 80's, mostly concentrating on socio-emotional aspects and problems of the youth. In this body of research, school-going middle to late adolescents from urban areas appeared to be overly-sampled in large groups through convenience sampling. Lastly, fully a quarter of studies were found to be only incidentally about adolescent development. Recommendations therefore focused on the utility of the developmental perspective in analyzing and interpreting data from youth research, the need for clearer definitions of Filipino adolescence, and the call for wider dissemination of scholarly works on the lives of the Filipino youth.
Do Filipino Youth Really Value Education? Exploring Filipino Adolescents' Beliefs About the Abstract and Pragmatic Value of Education and its Relationship to Achievement Goals and Learning Strategies
Allan B.I. Bernardo

An exploratory study was conducted to investigate how Filipino young adult students perceive the abstract and pragmatic value of education, and how these perceptions or beliefs about the value of education relate to the students' academic goal orientation (mastery, performance and work avoidance) and learning strategies (rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking and metacognition). A questionnaire was administered to determine college students' self reported beliefs, goals, and learning strategies. The key results indicate (a) strong positive beliefs about the abstract value of education; (b) weaker positive beliefs about the pragmatic value of college education; (c) somewhat negative beliefs about the pragmatic value of academic achievement; (d) weaker associations between the abstract and pragmatic beliefs, compared to the stronger associations among the different pragmatic beliefs about the value of education. In addition, (e) abstract beliefs were correlated only with performance goals, whereas pragmatic instrumental beliefs were correlated with all the goal orientations; (f) abstract beliefs were correlated only with the lowest level learning strategies, whereas pragmatic beliefs were more strongly associated with other higher level strategies; and (g) multiple regression analysis linked pragmatic beliefs and mastery goal orientation with the higher level learning strategies of critical thinking and metacognition. The results are discussed in terms of the possible importance of looking at the Filipino youth's beliefs about the personal relevance and importance of education and how they shape students' academic aspirations, motivations, performance, and achievement.
Self-Complexity, Self-Construal, and Negative Emotion in Filipino Adolescents
Liane Peña-Alampay

Two features of the Filipino adolescent self were explored: self-complexity, referring to the number and degree of differentiation among self-aspects, and self-construal, or how the self is conceived in relation to others. The relationship between these facets and the experience of negative emotions in adolescence was also determined. Participants were 207 12- to 21- year-olds who were administered a trait-sorting task to measure self-complexity, and self-report scales assessing degree of independence and interdependence in self-construals, and the extent of experienced identity confusion, emotional extremity, anxiety, and self-devaluation. Self structures were found to be multifaceted and differentiated, as well as relational and situation-bound in content. Complexity increased across age, bearing out social-cognitive perspectives on self development. While predominantly interdependent, self-construals also endorsed independent attitudes and values, suggesting a more bicultural self in Filipino youth. Only emotionality was related to self-complexity, with greater complexity associated with higher levels of emotionality.
Let's Talk About Txt! Understanding the Texting Culture of the Filipino Youth
Ma. Regina E. Estuar

The texting culture of the Filipino youth was investigated by looking at patterns of cellular phone ownership and usage across school (private and public) and gender (male and female). There exist high ownership and high usage regardless of school or gender. Significant differences were found in terms of length of ownership, frequency of use, use per feature, average texting rate and survival rate. Private school students were more frequent users of cost-incurring features, while public school students were more frequent users of the no-cost features of mobile phones. The former also have a higher texting rate than their public school counterparts. Survival rate (e.g., the number of days one can survive without a cellular phone) is higher among males and public school students. Factor analysis showed that there are underlying attitudes towards cellular phone usage, namely: degree of sensitivity to messages being sent or received, usage domain, degree of attachment to the phone, amount of intrusion on personal space and degree of need for connectivity. Significant correlations were found between usage and the underlying factors. Content analysis of reasons why adolescents like texting (explicit reasons) and stored messages (implicit reasons) showed significant differences in preferences.
Adolescent Males Referred for Psychotherapy: Examining Emotional Instability in Light of Parental Identification
Washington C. Garcia

This is a multiple case, multiple measures study designed to examine the factors that lead to children's identification with their parents and how such identification in turn impacts on their emotional well-being as adolescents. Only the integrated findings are reported in this paper. Results show that the nine adolescent males referred for psychotherapy all manifest strong emotional attachment to their mothers but only five of them seem to have an adequate bond with their fathers. Data suggests that the attention and affection shown by a parent play a significant part in this process. The limited interaction that the adolescents presently have with both parents does not seem to affect the parental emotional bond, but time spent together when they were younger children is highly connected to their positive impression of each parent. Perception of each parent may be crucial to the adolescent males' experience of emotional closeness: positive views of mothers persist inspite of the present difficult situation while images of fathers are readily tarnished under the same problematic circumstances. A number of other factors contribute to an adolescent male's emotional instability. Personal and marital issues of parents are triggered when the boy underperforms in school or manifests behavioral problems. The depressed mother withdraws from parenting and the angry father pressures the boy. The teenage son sees his father as aggravating his difficulties, a negative impression that is reinforced by the boy's perception that his mother is fearful of and troubled by his father. But a close mother-son relationship may also result in gender identity confusion and suicidal rumination. Negative modeling, on the other hand, may be observed in an adolescent boy who is close to his father.