Common problems of senior high school students: An exploratory study

Abstract

This descriptive exploratory study aimed to determine the common problems of Senior High School Students of a private university in Iloilo City. It is a one-shot survey design that employed a standard questionnaire that was administered to 329 respondents. The independent variables were sex, grade level, and strand. The Person-in-Environment theory and Identity Theory were the bases in describing the results of the survey. When ranked, the major problems identified were “being suspicious of others”, “budgeting money”, “worrying about future job or college”, “having the same thoughts over and over again”, and “having poor sleeping habits” which reflected in social, money, school, emotional, and health categories respectively. These were followed problems to a lesser proportion such as “looking too plain”, “having a recent change in attitude”, “parents expecting too much”, “arguing with brother or sister”, and “wasting money” which were found in appearance, attitude, parenting, family, and money categories. Problems that were recognized of least concern are found in religion, dating, and crisis categories. These were “not being able to get to church”, “arguing with boyfriend/girlfriend”, and “losing something valuable”. The results further revealed that there were students who coped well while others found difficulties in similar environmental conditions. Generally, most of the respondents were able to adapt to the problems in the checklist.