SPECIALIZED SUBJECT

DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN THE

APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES
_____ Semester, SY _____________
QUARTER 2, MODULE 5
FUNCTIONS OF APPLIED
SOCIAL SCIENCES

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Disciplines and Ideas in the Applied Social Sciences
Self-Learning Module
____Semester, SY ____ Quarter 2 – Module 5: Functions of
Applied Social Sciences First Edition, 2021

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 Functions of Applied Social
LESSON
Sciences

Hello Senior High learners! In this lesson you will learn to:

1. analyze the effects of applied social sciences processes on individuals, groups,

and society.

Before we proceed, did you know that applied sciences help people understand how
to interact with society? These fields influence everything we know, from things as bid and
complex as national policy down to more personal aspects of life such as our social
network? For many people around the world, government accountability and democracy are
immediate challenges and once resolved, a vast difference can be made. This is where
applied social sciences come in. Through fields like social work, counseling and
communication, common struggle become part of public discourse- leading to greater
acceptance and better understanding. Eventually, this helps individuals, groups, and
communities to cope better.

Given today’s situation, you are encouraged to seek help from your parents, siblings,
relatives, or even neighbors to better understand this lesson. The assistance you need will
most likely be given if you reach out to the people around you.

Take a few minutes to reflect on your personal experience with any services of social
science practitioners and any function of applied social sciences. How has counseling, social
work, communication channel, or any of the functions in society affected your personal life?
Or how has it influenced your life as a student?

Discussion of the Lesson

Social science practitioners come with a wide range of skills in areas such as
advocacy, counseling, and case management. Additionally, these practitioners have the
knowledge and experience needed to be able to work with individuals, groups and
communities. Equipped with these skills, social science practitioners will be able to improve
the well- being and social functioning of the people they served.

Professionals in these fields are eligible to apply for roles such as alcohol and drug
worker, contact supervisor, and rehabilitation officer among others. They can also fit well in
all other sectors requiring an understanding and application of psychology, such as in human
resources, market research, community services, health and social welfare.

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 The applied social sciences processes have
different effects in various sectors of society. The use of
the different theories, concepts, and methodologies from
the social sciences provide benefits to individuals,
groups, and the society. The benefits derived from the
applied social sciences produce numerous effects to
individual members, communities, and groups and the
society in general. The effects of applied social sciences
vary and they include increased awareness and
knowledge of oneself and others, attitude and value
change, behavioral changes, and structural changes.

Social Awareness, Self- Awareness, and Self- knowledge

Social awareness, self- awareness, and self- knowledge are very essential for quality
participation and functioning in society for they incorporate one’s appreciation of both the
inner- ecology and the social ecology. We become aware of who we are as individuals,
because of the presence of others with whom we share our existence. When we come to
recognize that there are other people and that they are essentially distinct and different from
us, that is the start of our social awareness that simultaneously leads us to become
conscious and aware of ourselves as human beings.

Social awareness is important for managing our own response to change, and it
forms an essential part of interpersonal intelligence. For students, this involves recognizing
others’ feelings and knowing how and when to assist others. It involves learning to show
respect for and understand others’ perspectives and their emotional states and needs. It
likewise involves learning to participate in positive, safe, and respectful relationships,
defining and accepting individual and group roles and responsibilities. This become the
foundation of student understanding of their role in advocacy in society and to build their
capacity to critique societal constructs and forms of discrimination, such as racism and
sexism. Social awareness capacitates individuals to appreciate diverse perspectives,
contribute to civil society, and understand relationship.

Self- awareness is an important step toward self- understanding and self- mastery
and it forms as an essential part of intrapersonal and emotional intelligence. It means having
the capacity to understand your personality, behaviors, habits, and emotions. It includes
being conscious of what you are good at (strengths) as well as of what you are not good at
(weaknesses). As a student, it also involves identifying and describing the factors that
influence your emotional responses as well as develop a realistic sense of your personal
abilities, qualities, and strengths. This is done through knowing what you are feeling in
the moment, and having a realistic assessment of your own abilities resulting in a well-
grounded sense of self- knowledge and self- confidence. It involves reflecting on and
evaluating your learning, identifying personal characteristics that contribute to or limit your
effectiveness, learning success or failures, and being able to interpret your own emotional
states, needs, and perspectives. A self- aware individual acts with personal and
social capability through recognition of emotions, recognition of personal qualities and

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 achievements, understanding oneself as a learner, and developing a reflective
practice.

Example: Showing concern for the feelings of your classmate who has been feeling a
little bit under the weather lately. Caring about and being motivated to contribute to the well-
being of one’s family, friends, school, community, the environment, and the greater good.

Attitude and Value Change

Attitudes are established ways of responding to people and situations that we have
learned based on the beliefs, values, and assumptions we hold. How we respond to
situations and our behavior can reflect our attitude. Values, on the other hand, are about
how we learned to think about how things ought to be, or people ought to behave, especially
in terms of qualities such as honesty, integrity, openness, etc. It can be defined as a concept
of the desirable, and internalized criterion or standard of evaluation a person possesses.
Such concepts and standards are relatively few and determine or guide an individual’s
evaluations of the many objects encountered in everyday life.

Tensions emanating from technological, social, and economic change bring about
attitude and value change. With all changes happening especially in the climate change
context, social and cultural values that may not be in support of survival need to give way to
those that are life nurturing. Two frameworks for climate change resiliency suggested ask
either for mitigation strategies or adaptation strategies to ensure human survival and
prosperity.

Relying only on disaster risk reduction and effective management of climate change
is not adequate; there is a need to have attitudinal and value transformation on negative
inclinations like the “bahala na” attitude; these cannot lead to individual, group, or community
sustainability. Our attitudes and values must change with time, so as to follow our new
abilities to survive to emerge. Our lifestyles are good as they are sustainable and
supported by our life means.

The applied social sciences allow us to understand various social phenomena and
because of this, people can make significant changes in their attitudes and values to prevent
the occurrence of various natural and social problems. Community social workers provide
people with information that can help them make important attitude and value changes so
that the impact of the disasters can be reduced. The impact of climate change to society and
its overarching effects on our country has become clearer and can easily be understood
through the information communicated to us by media. Disasters, climate change, and its
other adverse effects are now clear to society because these have been effectively
discussed and communicated through different forms of media through the application of the
different social science disciplines.

For instance, people have developed a new perspective and a change of attitudes
and values about the importance of climate change.

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Behavioral Change

Behavior is acquired or developed slowly and once it’s part of your life, you will learn
the difficulty of behavioral change. It is hard to break old habits or adopt new ones. Making a
permanent change in behavior is never a simple process, and it requires a substantial
commitment of time, effort, and emotion. Sometimes, one has to make several tries before
succeeding. Achieving behavioral change demands multiple solutions and even several
different techniques. Often, in the process of trying to change, many people become less
motivated, discouraged, and give up on their goals to change their behaviors. Generally,
behavioral change is highly transactional. The motivation is sustained by cost analysis. If
change is perceived to bring immediate gratification with good benefits compared to the
status quo, the behavioral change process tends to be sustainable. Behavioral change
management is never easy, but psychologists, therapists, physicians, and teachers have
developed a number of ways to effectively help people change their behaviors.

Research has produced theories to explain how change occurs. In the late 1970s,
researchers James Prochaska and Carlo Di Clemente were studying ways to help people
quit smoking and ended up developing one of the best known approaches to change, called
the Stages of Change model or The Transtheoretical Model (TTM). This model
demonstrates that change is not easy and requires a gradual progression of small steps
toward a larger goal. The model has been found to be an effective aid in understanding how
people go through change in behavior. Based on this model, there are three most important
elements in changing a behavior: (1) readiness to change; (2) barriers to change; and (3)

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expect relapse. One needs to have resources to aid change. These may not include both
economic and social capital, a support network, and an enabling environment. Change
happens in a gradual way. Relapses are considered an inevitable part of the change
process in achieving a lifelong change. Unwillingness and resistance to change are
very normal during the early stages. In the process, one becomes accustomed to the
process and increases the commitment to achieving the behavioral change goals.
Stages of Changes
Characteristics Strategies
(Prochaska and Di Clemente)

1. Precontemplation Denial Rethink your behavior

Ignorance of the problem Analyze yourself and your
actions
Assess risks of current
behavior

2. Contemplation Ambivalence Weigh pros and cons of

behavior change
Conflicted emotions
Confirm readiness and ability
to change
Identify barriers to change

3. Preparation Experimenting with small Write down your goals

changes
Prepare a plan of action
Collecting information about
change
Make a list of motivating
statements

4. Action Direct action toward a goal Reward your successes

Seek out social support

5. Maintenance Maintenance of the new Develop coping strategies for

behavior temptation
Avoiding temptation Remember to reward yourself

6. Relapse Disappointment Identify triggers that lead to

relapse
Frustration
Feelings of failure
Recognize barriers to
success

Reaffirm your goal and

commitment to change
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-stages-of-change-2794868

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 Self- change can be hard and so is changing others. Individual behavior and
collective behavior all need to change if the behavior in question is not positive. Applied
social sciences bring in wealth of approaches, techniques, and tools to facilitate change on
the individual level and on the group level.

Behavioral change has been rightly associated with the role of the applied social
sciences processes. There is more discourse on power and corruption, conflict management
and peace building process, and risk assessment behavior. The media have made issues of
power and corruption to become a public matter leading to arrests and detention and trials of
powerful political individual like the three Philippines senators who were tried for plunder
cases in 2014 (Former Senate President, Sen. Ponce Enrile, former Senate Minority Leader,
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, and Sen. Bong Revilla).

The practice and insights from social work and counseling are influencing progress in
conflict management and peace building in Mindanao and across society. Counselors and
social workers are more and more impacting public response to risk assessment behavior
on individual, group, and community levels. The campaign against the spread of HIV and
prevention as well as care for the afflicted is largely due to the input from applied social
sciences and the work of the professionals in the practice.

Example. In order to graduate in Senior High School, you have decided to change
your behavior towards studying.

Structural Change

Structural change refers to the

radical shift in the way reality is organized
and does not necessarily include the
substantive change. Structural change, in
economic terms, is the transformation of
policy, legal, social, cultural, economic,
and/ or physical aspects of an
environment that impede equity for all. As
such, it requires long- term interventions
that build on knowledge, behavior, and
attitude modification across multiple
domains: public and private institutions,
civil society, community groups, and in the
general population. Normally, this is only
realizable when there is transformation in
dominant sectors that help to remove, barriers to equity for all in every opportunity area such
as health and safety, education, employment, housing, and income and wealth. The
complexity of issues may require starting in one institution and breeding to another institution
as well as long- term close monitoring of public policies.

In many countries, women were not allowed to hold public office and they were made
to look incompetent using a social structure, for example, which prevented them to go further
in education or have exposure to public service. Systemically, their exposure was in the

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kitchen and domestic context. To change this, there are global efforts from public policy to
social awareness campaign and education where organizations and companies are
required to have women representation in workplace and public affairs.

Evidently, personal and family relations, gender, overseas migration of Filipino

workers, domestic violence, single parenting, community life, criminality, and substance
abuse are not only changing in structure; they are also becoming more common and normal.
Applied social sciences are facilitating much of people’s struggle to live with these changes.
Social work, counseling, and communication are making common issues more of a public
discourse leading to greater acceptance and better understanding and coping on individual,
group, and community and tools to deal with changes in a more comprehensive way.
Example. Equal rights for men and women.

Synthesis of the Effects of Applied Social Sciences

Social sciences, in their broadness, provide a huge theoretical resource to explain

much of the social phenomena that affect individuals, families, groups, and communities.
Applied sciences raise the social science to a practical science to address personal, family,
group, and community problems by helping individuals develop their capacity to fit well in the
environment and by challenging the environment to become better for individuals to flourish.
Guidance and counseling, social work, and communication and journalism provide the
mechanism, tools, methods, and processes to bridge the individual and his/ her community.
Applied social sciences are rooted in the principles of human rights, social justice, and
inclusion as well as empowering individuals, groups, and communities to develop their full
potential and well- being. When these are not realized, denied, or violated, then applied
social sciences set in with appropriate measures to transform humanity.

Learning Activity 1

Directions: Read the following questions carefully. Answer briefly.

1. As a teenager, what is your contribution for the well- being of your family in this time of
pandemic?

2. Attitudes are established ways of responding to people and situations that we have
learned based on the beliefs, values, and assumptions we hold. How did you respond to the
changes brought by this pandemic (e.g. modular distance learning)?

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 Learning Activity 2

Directions: Read each statement below carefully, and fill in the blank (s) with the correct
answer. Answer may be more than one word.

1. The applied social sciences processes have different in various sectors

of society.
2. Social awareness, self- awareness, and are very essential for
quality participation and functioning in society for they incorporate one’s appreciation
of both the inner- ecology and the social ecology.

3. Tensions emanating from technological, social, and economic change bring about
and .

4. If change is perceived to bring immediate gratification with good benefits compared

to the status quo, the process tends to be sustainable.

5. The radical shift in the way reality is organized and does not necessarily include
the substantive change is called .

Thank you for answering the practice exercises. If you answered the practice exercises
correctly, you are now ready to proceed to do the written works. If not, please try until you
arrived on the correct answer.

Instruction: Please write your learning from the above discussion. Write your learning in
your notebook/answer sheet.

Upon reading the lesson above, I learned that…

and realized that…

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Directions: Read and answer the questions carefully.

1. What are the three most important elements in changing a behavior?

2. Can you still recall a situation in your life wherein you wanted to change your
behavior to live a better life? What are the hindrances you have encountered during
the process and how did you overcome those hindrances?

3. One of the effects of applied social sciences processes is structural change. Do you
agree that women and men should have equal rights when it comes to job
opportunities? Why?

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Learning Activity 1

Answers may vary.

Learning Activity 2

1. effects
2. self- knowledge
3. attitude and value change
4. behavioral change
5. structural change

Insights from the Lesson

Answers may vary

Written Work
Answers may vary

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Textbook:
Sampa, E. M. (2017). Discipline and ideas in the applied social sciences. Manila,
Philippines: Rex Book Store.

Online Resources:
www.scribd.com
www.elcomblus.com
psalomon.com.mx

Photo Credits:
[Voters]. Retrieved from https://dreamstime.com
All images were captured by ArPaVil

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