2219 Recto Ave, Sampaloc, Manila, 1008 Metro Manila

A Qualitative Study of Late Adolescent Women as a Freshmen Student in Urban Manila

A Research Paper Presented to

Mr. Marvin Valdez Ibangga
Research Adviser

By:
Anin, Lyka
Bernal, Ian
Chidrome, Kirsten Daena C.
Gregorio, Zejirah Gavin S.
Mendoza, Mark Felix Angelo M.
Missuari, Youusra A.
Reyes, Clarizza M.
Vivares, Joshua

December 9, 2019
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
A. Literature Review
B. Theoretical Framework
C. Statement of Purpose
II. Methodology & Data Collection
A. Design/Approach
B. Setting, sampling & Population
C. Data Gathering Procedure
D. Instrumentation
E. Analysis Plan
F. Ethical Consideration
III. Results
IV. Discussion
 I. Introduction

It has long been acknowledged that College or higher education is an investment in one’s
future, beyond a degree or career preparation, college gives experience for personal growth and
improvement of oneself (Moon, 2012). As students go through the adaptation of new social and
educational environment, college is also a stressful time, especially for those who have to learn a
different culture, values, and language on top of having to prepare academically (Misra &
Castillo, 2004). According to DeFinnis (2018), college transition after completing high school
has been extensively studied by previous research. Changes in diversity of peer groups and
separation from high school peers as one goes through college transition, support in their
transition from parents and other factors that relate to academic stress, these are topics frequently
studied (DeFinnis, 2018). However, the perception of stress is not a topic commonly explored.

According to Misra et al (2004), the impact of gender-role expectations in the perception

and reactions to academic stress. Additionally, Pheko et al (2014) also stated that further
investigation of how students’ social, cultural and environmental experiences could affect their
way of perceiving stress, along with the variables such as gender, upbringing, age, spiritual
beliefs and tribal differences when it comes to handling life changes that needs acculturation.

In turn, the research gap for this study is the impact of gender-role expectations of rural
to urban college students’ lived experiences on their perception of academic stress and how they
react to it as they go through acculturation. Prior research has shown that gender differences
resulted in different reaction to stress, which could be a result of gender-role socialization (Misra
et al., 2004), therefore it is relevant how gender-roles could affect the perception and reaction to
stress.

Transition is a time when substantial change is undergone and can be in a variety of

contexts, along with a variety of factors such as physical, developmental and environmental
changes(DeFinnis, 2018). According to DeFinnis (2018), transitioning from high school to
college is something many individuals go through in their life, making it a fairly common topic.
Although, in findings reported in previous studies, college adjustment is experienced differently
by various populations, based on factors particular to the individuals within the population
(DeFinnis, 2018).

Acculturation is a process in which one balances their culture with the culture of the
receiving country or region and is often seen as a stressful process (Schwartz et al., 2013).
According to Schwartz et al (2013), the acculturative processes and their relation to difficulties
in adjustment have been studied in college students.

As acculturation emphasizes on maintaining one’s own heritage culture while acquiring

or learning another culture, the researchers will be using “The Social Cognitive Theory” or SCT.
Social Cognitive theory considers the unique way a person can acquire and maintain behavior in
the context of the person’s environment where the behavior will be performed, while also taking
into consideration past or lived experiences (LaMorte, 2019). This will be further discussed later
on in this paper.

A. Literature Review

Stress is nothing new to most people, that includes students. Though people have
accepted it as a normal occurrence in life, for the most part. Stress, to students, is a very
familiar concept.

Stress is the process of how an individual would react when faced with certain
external and/or internal problems and challenges (Essel & Owusu, 2017).

Stress in freshmen college students is commonly caused by heavy workload in

school affecting one’s emotional health, mental health, and physical health (Essel &
Owusu, 2017). Experiencing stress as a student can hinder coping up with their studies. It
is expected that stress is unavoidable among students in their every-day life experience,
as a student, they all want to aim for a passing mark even if health is at risk. Stress affects
different aspects of our everyday habits such as our everyday routines, well being as a
person, and learning habits. Being prone to or exposed to major stress also reported
having the worst health outcome that can reduce the quality of life (Essel & Owusu,
2017).

Stress that freshmen college students experience will influence their college
adjustment, which is based on how much a student achieves through it and it’s impact on
his/her self-awareness and personal growth. (Sharma B., 2012)

It is in freshman year that college students first experience moving away from
family and familiar environment and are made to adapt to this major change in their life
(DeFinnis, 2018). It will be significantly harder for a student to cope with the new
environment, especially when the new environment is drastically different from what
they are familiar with. Like, moving from rural to urban.

College freshmen that came from rural places may find it hard to suddenly adapt
to the cities or urban places. Having to deal with a very different way of living and how
they will adapt to their new city life can be very stressful since it will be piling up
together with his/her school workload (Xiulan, 2015). Things like their coping
mechanisms on the sudden culture shock and stress from workload will be used as our
criteria.
Manila has been classified as one of the top 10 most stressful cities in the world
(Lee-Brago,2017). Manila garnered a rank of 10th and a score of 8.92 out of 10. The
study had factors like percentage of green area, traffic situation, public transportation,
and even the debt situations of the citizens (Lee-Brago, 2017).
 Most regions in the Philippines have reached a certain level of urbanization
(Perez, 2019). According to Perez (2019), in a census last 2015 conducted by the
Philippine Statistics Authority, within Luzon the 3 regions with the lowest level of
urbanization are Region I- Ilocos, Region II-Cagayan Valley and Region V-Bicol. In
addition, according to Comelec (2015), the provinces in these three regions are: Ilocos
Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Batanes, Cagayan, Isabela, Quirino, Nueva
Vizcaya, Albay, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Masbate and Sorsogon.

Females are more conscious of evaluations and expectations of others and are
more likely to conform to social pressures that say how they should think and act
compared to males (Perez, 2012).

According to DeFinnis (2018), the college completion rate studied at the

American Institute for Research, of those who are full-time students that are in a
four-year course have 30% of them not continue after their first year.

Being proficient in language affects how well an individual’s ability to learn and
develop academically. If a student has trouble in the language used in the academic
environment, it would cause them much frustration and could affect their performance in
the long run (Essel & Owusu, 2017).

Students that have a distant relationship with family, tend to lack a form of
support, namely familial support, to get through the most stressful of times emotionally,
and challenging periods academically (Bland & Stevenson, n.d.).

People are born without knowing, in order for us to achieve something we need to
work hard and as we strive to achieve things, we also check self-development. Many
problems and challenges that we can face but you cannot always depend on someone. As
cited in Definnis (2018), to have a sense of identity, each person works for it.
 According to Petersen & Hyde (2019), expectations from parents may influence
the educational choices of their children and even their career choices. Recent evidences
have also stated that bias against women continues to exist, in addition, the stereotypes
conveyed by parents and even teachers could discourage the students in pursuing jobs
that may be considered atypical for their gender (Petersen & Hyde, 2014).

There are multiple factors of stress that are experienced by students, and they all
have their own ways of coping with it.

Better help, an article on November 13, 2019, stating the changes during late
adolescence.

Relationship changes:
Their correlation, both romance and friendship, help them to enlarge their
comprehension about the world through experiences and learning. Teenagers nowadays
tend to make friends with someone who also has their vibes. They prefer having them not
because they have similarities in terms of behaviors, vibes, and such but because they
start enjoying having connections with them particularly when it comes to sharing ideas
and values (Boada, 2019)

Intellectual changes:
During teen years, new body parts grow at different rates, and also goes for the
brain. Once we learn how to work or plan things out, analyze the ideas, and acknowledge
an individual's perspective. It's easy for them to chase goals. Looking upon the thoughts
they had neglected, they start to see that there are multiple ways of resolving problems.
What defines us is how we think carefully on these conflicts (Boada, 2019).

This phenomenological study will focus on the student’s perception of stress and
how gender roles
 Definition of Terms:

Gender Roles - ​Gender Roles are how society expects a person to behave based
on what men and women “normally” do. It is what society thinks what a certain
individual would do with his/her life, which includes duties, mannerisms, traits, and
cultural expectations (Nagoshi. et al., 2012).

Province - ​A province is a certain area that is within the country that is a union ‘s
smaller fragment. (Your Dictionary)

Gender Differences - ​is to measure groups of men and women on a couple of

variables, as an example: physical, verbal and relational aggression and compute an
impact size for each individual variable. (Giudice, M. 2015)

B. Theoretical Framework

Social Cognitive Theory:

Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) began as the Social Learning Hypothesis (SLT) during
the 1960s by Albert Bandura which eventually transformed into the Social Cognitive Theory
(SCT) in 1986 and believes that learning happens in a social setting with a dynamic and
complementary connection of the individual, condition, and conduct. The exceptional element of
SCT is the accentuation on social impact and its accentuation on outer and inner social support.
SCT considers the one of a kind manner by which people obtain and look after conduct, while
additionally considering the social condition wherein people play out the conduct. The
hypothesis considers an individual's past encounters, which factor into whether social activity
will happen. These past encounters impacts fortifications, desires, and anticipations, all of which
shape whether an individual will take part in a particular conduct and the reasons why an
individual takes part in that conduct (LaMorte, 2019).
 The main objective of SCT is to clarify how individuals manage their conduct through
control and fortification to accomplish objective coordinated conduct that can be kept up after
some time. The initial five builds were created as a major aspect of the SLT; the development of
self-viability was included when the hypothesis advanced into SCT (LaMorte, 2019).

Reciprocal Determinism - this is the main concept of SCT. which shows how an
individual’s Cognition, Environment, and Behavior Interact and how a person is shaped by these
three factors (LaMorte, 2019).

Using this specific theory, the researchers can connect it with gender roles and how it
turns into stress. For example, a male first-time college student is supposed to take the course
“culinary” until his parents told him that he should instead take engineering as his course since
his parents believe that since he is a man, then he’s supposed to do things that is male-oriented.
Because of this Environment, his behavior changed, leading him to take engineering as his
course against his will and in turn brings him stress. Since his behavior changed, so did his
cognition, leading him to think that he is obligated to take this course even though this is not
what he wanted. The feeling of doing something he’s not passionate about, again, brings him
stress and by taking the course, his parents became more inclined to gender roles. Using
Reciprocal Determinism, we can see that the three factors, Environment, Behavior, and
Cognition are all connected and can become a stressor to a student who is experiencing Gender
Roles in his/her environment.
 C. Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this study is to see the impact of gender-role expectations on

college freshman students’ perception of stress and how they react to it in regards to their
perception. Moreover, to further the understanding of the impact of gender-role expectations, the
following questions were asked:

1.)What are the different Gender Role expectations to late adolescent women as a Freshman
College Student in Urban Manila?

2.) What are the lived experiences of late adult women as a Freshman College Student in urban
manila?

3.) How do late adult women studying in urban manila percieve Academic Stress?

II. Methodology

A. Design/Approach

Qualitative research is the process of studying social phenomena that focuses on

answering “how” and “why” questions instead of the “what” of the social phenomena. It
commonly uses human experience as it’s main foundation rather than using statistical and
logical procedures. Qualitative research may focus on one of three topics: “Individuals,
 societies and cultures, and language and communication” to study (Health Care
University of Utah, n.d.).

According to Duquesne University (2019), Phenomenology is the method that

assist us to seize the meaning of people's life-world. The study of phenomenology aims to
know more about the experience of a phenomena and explore what people experienced. It
has a strong foundation in philosophy, it is recommended that you explore the writing of
key thinkers

The researchers will use phenomenological methodology to create a better

understanding as it focuses on a person’s experience on a certain phenomena and to have
the best results possible to make this study as accurate as possible.

B. Setting, Sampling, and Population

The researchers of this phenomenological study will utilize purposive sampling in

identifying the most appropriate individuals suited to our particular study of interest.
According to Duan, Green, Hoagwood, Horwitz, Palinkas & Wisdom, (2015), purposive
sampling is usually found and used in qualitative research, like this one. It is to identify
and select cases that are rich in information that is related and most useful to the
phenomenon being studied (Duan et al., 2015).

Purposive sampling’s main goal is to focus on certain properties of a certain group

so they can accurately choose their needed participants, in this case, we’ll need freshmen,
college students, that can help the researchers validate and see the best results that are
given by the participants.

The criteria of our respondents are the following: full-time, female, college
freshman student with a four-year course in a University/College in Manila, lives away
from parents, comes from Region I, II and V, and are within the age range of 18-24. The
 researchers picked these criteria as, according to previous studies mentioned in Chapter
I.B., these are the cases that would be beneficial to this study.

For the purpose of this research, the researchers considered Manila as the “urban”
area and will be utilizing the provinces in Region I, II and V as our rural provinces.

The researchers will utilize data saturation as a way to determine the number of
respondents needed for this study thus allowing the researchers to form a consistent
result.

C. Data Gathering Procedure

​For the purpose of this research, interviews will be used. interviews are personal
interviews. The aim is to identify participants' lived experience regarding a particular
research subject. A research interview involves an interviewer, who coordinates the
process of the conversation and asks questions, and an interviewee, who responds to
those questions. Interviews will be conducted face-to-face. The internet is also emerging
as a tool for interviewing (Easwaramoorthy & Zarinpoush, 2006). The conduction of
research involves the use of questions regarding the things that affect their perception of
stress and the way they react to it, as well as the gender expectations that the respondents
experience.

The researchers will get at least fifteen (15) respondents, whether or not the
researchers will look for more respondents will be based on data saturation.

D. Instrumentation

The researchers will design central questions to find the appropriate respondents for
the interview that will be the main source of data for the study. The central questions will
 first be checked by a psychometrician then will later be used for a pilot study with no
more than 2 respondents. This will be done to confirm if the central questions made by
the researchers are appropriate to find the exact respondents they need. Any editing or
changing of questions that are needed will be done after the pilot study then the
researchers will proceed with the actual study with the improved central questions.

E. Analysis Plan

The researchers use thematic analysis. It is commonly used in analyzing

qualitative data, it is usually used in gathering data such as interview inscript (Caulfied,
2019). The purpose of thematic analysis is commonly used in analyzing the gathered data
to find common themes, ideas, opinions, and common meanings that come up repeatedly
(Caulfied, 2019). This is a good way of gathering information to come up with a
conclusion.

According to Caulfide (2019) “Thematic analysis is a good approach to research where you’re
trying to find out something about people’s views, opinions, knowledge, experiences or values
from a set of qualitative data – for example, ​interview transcripts, social media profiles, or
survey responses”.

The researchers will create themes based on the data gathered from the
respondents and thus will be the basis for the data saturation.

F. Ethical Consideration

The researchers pledge to here by following the code of ethics in order to create
and build a foundation that is just and humane to further expand the understanding of the
researchers’ study.
 Any info gathered and put on this research paper is the truth and no fabrication of
any info gathered and analyzed from the data will happen. The researchers will remain
objective in their procedures and with their respondents. The researchers will put all and
any of their respondents’ concerns and well-being first and foremost to ensure their
safety. ​The researchers must respect the rights and beliefs of each participant. The
researchers will respect any and all intellectual property used for this research study. The
researchers ensure the safety of the confidentiality of each participant’s identity and
answer. The researchers will provide any and all information to the participants about the
research for them to be well-informed. Each participant has the rights and as long as the
researchers have their consent whether it’s verbally or even in paper. Any and all relevant
information for the improvement of society gathered from this study will be responsibly
published. No discrimination will be found in this paper. The researchers will also ensure
that all legalities that this study may require (if any), will be met.

G. Appendices

To further explore the impact of gender-role expectations on female college

freshman students, the following questions were used in interviewing the respondents.
1.)What are the different Gender Role expectations to late adolescent women as a Freshman
College Student in Urban Manila?

- What are the Gender Role expectations of your parents/your teachers in your studies as a
Freshman College Student in Urban Manila?

2.) What are the lived experiences of late adult women as a Freshman College Student in urban
manila?

- What are your experiences in your academics as a Freshman College Student in urban
manila?
- What are your experiences in your academics as a Freshman College Student in your
dorm?
- What are your experiences in your academics as a Freshman College Student with your
social life?

3.) How do late adult women studying in urban manila perceive Academic Stress?

- As a Freshmen Student in Urban Manila, how do you perceive Academic Stress?

- As a woman, how do you perceive the Academic Stress since transferred here in Urban
Manila

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