Whole person development status of students in four universities in Iloilo, Philippines: Inputs for the development of an enhanced learning environment program

Abstract

This descriptive-correlational study determined the whole person development (WPD) status of students in four universities in Iloilo, Philippines in terms of social, spiritual, psychological, intellectual, professional, and physical domains. Nine hundred twenty-six (926) senior high school students enrolled in second semester of School Year 2017-2018 in four universities in Iloilo were randomly selected to provide information on the status of their WPD using a standardized questionnaire. Findings revealed that generally, students in these four universities have high status of WPD, and among the six WPD domains, spiritual ranked the highest while psychological the lowest. Sub-domains that were rated the greatest are spiritual quest, peer relationship, and family relation while those rated the least are emotional health, community care, and civic responsibility which suggests that students need more help in these areas. Academic achievement, gender, number of extra/co-curricuiar/outreach activities the students are involved in, nature of extra/co- curricular/outreach activities the students are engaged in, and availment of peer counseling service were found to be significantly related to overall status of the WPD; religious affiliation to intellectual and physical domains; living arrangement to spiritual and intellectual domains; gender to physical domain; type of university the students are enrolled in to social and physical domains; number of extra/co-curricular/outreach activities to all the domains except psychological; nature of extra/co-curricular/outreach activities to spiritual and psychological domains; and availment of peer counseling service to social, professional, and physical domains. A combination of gender, academic achievement, number of extra/co-curricular/outreach activities, nature of extra/co-curricular/outreach activities, and availment of peer counselling service were found to be significant predictors of the whole person development status and among these variables, the nature of activities participated in by the students was the strongest predictor of the status of the WPD, with 0.159 unit increase in WPD in every unit increase in the nature of activities engaged in.