Self-efficacy in Living Independently and Level of Parental Dependence of Students

Self-efficacy is the belief in oneself that succeeding in any task possible (Bandura, 1994; Akhtar, 2008). Self-efficacy theory, also convey that these efficacy beliefs play a crucial role in psychological adjustments and problems, in physical health, also in professional and self-guided behavioral changes (Maddux, 2005). Bandura (1986,1994) stated that self-efficacy came from four sources the mastery experiences which means successes creates a strong belief in one’s capabilities and abilities while failures weakens those beliefs; the second one is the vicarious experiences made by social models, an observation on people seen as a role model.

The given efforts by the role models produces a strong belief to the observers that they are also capable of achieving success when they found similarities of belief in these idols this finding is supported by Schunk (1989) saying others that have similarity to you offer the best basis for comparison; another is verbal persuasion or also known as social persuasion, it is a way of strengthening a person’s belief that he is capable to succeed especially when people who 14 give word of encouragements like ‘you can do it’ came from people who have a big impact on that person like teachers, parent, and friends, words alone make a big influence on a person’s life; lastly is a person’s emotional and physiological states, this is a way of modifying self-beliefs of efficacy by reducing a person’s stress reactions and turning negativity into positive emotions because it is believed that emotions can influence your judgement towards self-efficacy.

Lane and Lane (2001) conducted a study on the predictive effectiveness of selfefficacy in an academic setting, where seventy-six post-graduate students respond on a questionnaire assessing efficacy expectations on the competencies they consider to succeed in terms of performance on their course. The 13-week difference in time between completing the self-efficacy questionnaire and completing the performance criterion was considered significant to assess the stability of self-efficacy measures. In which participants then again completed the same questionnaire a week later. The test-retest reliability results showed relative stability in efficacy to cope with intellectual demands, pass 1st time and achieve a specific grade.

The regression result showed that ‘selfefficacy to cope with the intellectual demands of the program’ predicted a performance variance of 11.5%. With a 13-week time gap in self-efficacy and performance and the high complexity of the task, the finding suggests self-efficacy has great value in an academic setting. In the discussion done by Schunk (1989) he stated self-efficacy might operate during academic learning. At the start of an activity, students differ in their beliefs about their capabilities to perform skills, in acquiring the knowledge, mastering the material, and so forth. Initial self-efficacy differs as a function of aptitude and prior experience. Such personal factors as goal setting and information processing, along with situational factors like giving rewards and praises from the teachers similar to the token economy (Cleofe, 2016), affect students while they are working. From these factors, students acquire cues signaling how well they are learning, in which they use to assess efficacy for further learning. When students sense that they are making progress in learning, motivation is enhanced. So as students work on tasks and become more skillful, self-efficacy for performing well will be maintained (Schunk, 1991).

Although this line of research talks about how self-efficacy affects students in terms of performance in school, its focus was to know the effects of self-efficacy of students in academe. In this research, the researchers look for answers on self-efficacy of students living independently and level of parental dependence of these students to their parents residing in the provinces. Which enables to find self-efficacy of students not just in academe but also in life. Self-efficacy in living independently and dependency to parents is the main question in this problem since achieving such things as independence is really hard especially when you have lived your whole life depending almost all the things to your parents.

On the other hand, dependence conversely, describes a relationship of which one party counts on another for the fulfillment of needs (Lewis, et al., 2014). Independence has to do with self-reliance and being able to take care of oneself (Ryan and Lynch, 1989; Whittington and Peters, 1996; Lewis, et al., 2014). Which according to Lewis, et al., (2014) necessarily involves economic independence, which only a few students locally have. In fact, in a report from the social issues research centerin Britain, the report shows that ages ranging from 18-25 remains dependent to their 16 parents financially despite the fact of declaring themselves independent from their parents.

Thus, according to (Bridges, 2003; Caldwell and Hyams-Ssekasi, 2016) the progression of settling and adapting to living in a new place and/or institutions is often expressed as a transition where one “unplugs” from the old world and “plugs to the new one; sometimes called a process that starts with an ending and ends with a beginning. Which Bridges (2003) finds ending the old situations and the identity that occurs before the move could be the largest difficulty that people face in any transition. This ending phase, which Van Gennep (1960) calls ‘separation’ involves the individual dissociating themselves from their families and friends, previous communities, and the old self-being erased in preparation for the new one.

Tinto (1987) also states that separation can be recognized as a temporal refusal of families and deeply rooted values that could lead to habituation of new values and situations that are not similar to the previous experiences. Tinto (1987) stressed out students from different communities may find separation from their parents difficult. Schlossberg et al., (1995) claims that separation can be a painful process and involve feelings of grief as the old identity is lost. As claimed by Sidoryn and Slade (2008) the place where students originated affects their experiences at university with regard to the social and academic environment, as they come from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Separation from parents during adolescence means casting off all childish acts including childish dependencies and idealized representation of parents.

Separation is essential for a healthy, autonomous functioning during adulthood, for it better equips adolescent to develop investments outside of the family socially and broaden their social 17 network, as well as it is believed to be adaptive and normative (Blos, 1967; Smollar, & Youniss, 1989; Beyers, Goossens, Van Calster, & Duriez, 2005; McElhaney, Allen, Stephenson & Hare, 2009). Contrary to that, detachment from parents by adolescents means radical and developmentally premature emotional distancing, associates to broad deficits in behavioral maladjustment at some parts because adolescents being detached from parents usually lacks access to essential forms of support and socialization that parents ideally provides (Ingoglia, Lo Coco, Liga, & Lo Cricchio, 2011; Ryan & Lynch, 1989).

Seeking independence from parents also means detachment from parents. Thus withdrawing from the family and moving toward a new place, creating new attachments or social bonds in a much wider community (Blos, 1979; Damon, 1983; Petersen & Taylor, 1980). As what Cleofe (2016) stated in her book personal development that ages 16-19 years old are the transition from middle adolescence to late adolescence. Stating that this stage of life is not easy, for the responsibilities and tasks that lie within its scope is far different from what a child has lived by their whole lives. Adolescents or also known as “teenagers” needs to be physically reliant and emotionally independent from parents, should take away all the childish acts and start acting as mature individuals.

At this age, teenagers’ primary tasks are achieving masculine or feminine social role, achieving new and more mature relationships with other teenagers of both sexes and achieving emotional and physical independence from parents. Making adolescence stage full of challenges because it is the stage not only of “being” but also a stage of “becoming”. Arnett (1994) found that for a sample of college students that individualistic and intangible: full responsibility for their actions, deciding based on beliefs and values independently from parents and creating a more equal adult relationship with parents instead of a more explicit role transitions is the criteria that count as the most important thing in making life transitions. In fact, students find growing independence in terms of taking responsibility (Holdsworth, 2009). Schlossberg, Waters, and Goodman (1995) define transition as “moving out” stage that is followed by a stage of “moving in” to a new situation and absorbing the norms and rules of the new place until an individual successfully “moves through” or simply learn to survive in the new world.

During the transition to college, students most likely to experience great adjustment for the new environment and to the people around them. This will also make an impact on the persons they are close to for they need to embrace the absence of that specific person. The distance of home matters for the students because it is an advantage for others if their home is near from school. It is a chance for them to go home every weekend to attend social gatherings. While for the students whose homes are quite far from school, do not have the chance to go home every weekend. As a result, there will be a sudden change when it comes to their connectivity towards their domestic environment, from extremely close to slowly fading relationship (Firmin, Johnson, & Yoder, 2009).

Nortier (1995) added, “our experience has taught us that transition, whatever it may be, is a process internal to the individual, slow and progressive, not demarcated in time”. Things such as ‘normal’ transitions happen in which an individual must go through things that are anticipated, expected and occasionally planned and therefore these can be 19 handled with minimum disruption (Lewthwaite, 1996; Schlossberg, 1984). On the other hand, things such as larger transitions exist in which are either unexpected or unplanned and occasionally unwanted (te Riele, 2004; Zhoua, et al., 2008). Such transitions happen outside the bounds of everyday living and involve the individual learning a wide range of new behaviors and cultural practices (Hyams-Ssekasi, 2012).

Related Studies Hewett, Douglas, Keil (2015) made a report presenting findings in their research study entitled “A longitudinal study of blind and partially sighted young people in the UK” concerning current living circumstances, including those already living independently; Transition to independent living; Preparation for specific tasks; Knowledge of adult services and Guide dogs. The report consists of 61 participants from the original 80 participants during the 1st phase of the study. Using a semi-structured telephone interviews where over half (32) of the participants are still living in their family home, 25 lived away from home for a part of the year, 13 lived in university halls, 9 living in a shared private rented accommodation with only four of the participants have made the transition from living in their family home and moving into their own accommodation which they would describe as their permanent residence.

The report stated that some people who are still not living independently can’t wait to live independently for the sole reason that there are things they can’t do freely when they are living with their family in while two of the participants added that it’s not because they are with their family but because they are not yet confident in doing things alone. Self-efficacy means having the courage to believe in oneself that he/she can do things according to his/her objectives in life (Milosevio & McCabe, 2015)

According to Caldwell (2016), upon living in other places far from home is challenging, individuals seeking for tomorrow experienced settling and adapting to the new community and environment. Being in this new situation there is a process to be done like accepting the big responsibility of facing challenges helps the student’s determination and resourcefulness shown. Different places, different people to interact and the different strategies used in coming up. Homesickness is a feeling of missing home, family, and friends (Fisher, 2016). This feeling is very common for the freshmen students. Homesickness may cause a negative effect for a student studying far from home especially for those who have low self-efficacy. It will put them at risk because of the major adjustments that they will experience. It was found out that this will affect the social interactions of the student towards others. On the other side, the academic performance of the student was not affected by homesickness (English et al, 2017)

According to Khan, et.al. (2017). Parental relationship helps reduced difficulties in adjusting and getting along in facing his new world. Anxiety and stress arise when the parental relationship between the parent and the child is not in a good term; the child will experience difficulties in sharing or expressing their thoughts or even worst their unsolved problems. This kind of situation will create a barrier that will lead to a negative outcome not just for their parents but also to the students. 21 It was indicated in the said topic that living independently showing themselves what they are from their homes. The habitual they have used to be and the family ritual back home could be practice living alone. Eventually, a person can adopt different attitudes out of the society that differs from home. Some provincial students would likely to be more attached in parental dependency. Like they have missed the cook, smell of their room, comfiness in their house and their motions may not be limited. (Jameison & Simpson 2016).

Clercq, M. et. al., (2013) stated that adapting to the new environment is one of the keys to a student’s success. It is important for it helps the student attain their goals of studying. Based on the result, it was identified that parental guidance and self-efficacy beliefs are applicable to the adjustment of the student to the new environment where he or she is into. The study shows that self-efficacy was the most powerful and effective way in students’ adaptation and adjustment. The study of Beiter, R. et. al., (2014) stated that the connection of depression, anxiety, and stress towards the college students. It was found out that the students who were considered as most depressed, experiencing anxiety and stress were the transferees, upperclassmen, and students who are not living in the campus. College students are experiencing a transition in their life as a student that leads to unhealthy nutritional behavior and the possibility of gaining weight.

Based on the results gathered, it was identified that students who are living far from their parents for more than one year have higher total skills scores compared to those who are just living away for one year or less. (Wilson, et al., 2016) 22 The significant relation between the subjective and creativity would have a great impact on the students. In addition to it would be the psychological and social well-being that was significantly related. The study of the role of self-efficacy was not more on subjective well-being than the creativity. It aims to broaden the role of creativity and efficacy. In assessing the creativity, the results would show that their significant relation between the creativity and subjective emotional psychological and social well-being. The demonstrated predictive capability of subjective well-being through the self-efficacy and creativity results from the regression analysis. Strengthening self-efficacy and optimizing creativity, therefore the findings would have a significant implication for improving students’ subjective well-being (Tamannaeifar & Motaghedifard, 2014).

Self- efficacy plays a vital role in molding an individual into a person distinct from other individuals. It is a characteristic that leads a person to be the person they really are. Thus, self-efficacy of an individual may be affected by several factors and one of that factors is the environment they grow up. Example to that is how different western people from Filipino people in terms of living independently and maturity. Western countries honor independence and maturity according to age, just like how foreign young adults gain independence the moment they turn to their legal age, they are obliged to live on their own. Contrary to how Filipino people gain independence from parents. Filipinos get to live on their own mostly during the moment they decide to build their own family. This mentality of Filipinos is affected with how we Filipino value family bond.