Sample Thesis ( Panukat NG Positibong Pananaw NG MGA Pilipino) PDF

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PANUKAT NG POSITIBONG PANANAW NG MGA PILIPINO

Introduction

“It’s okay not to be okay.” This is one of the quotations that arise during the lockdown. It simply implies that no one can invalidate a person’s negative emotion. Primarily, this quotation became famous because an unseen kind of optimism bloomed out of nowhere. “Kaya mo yan.”, “Ano ka ba? Positive lang.”, “Masyado kang nega.” are just some of the most common lines we Filipinos tell to our beloved friends or families when they are in times of trouble. But, we didn’t see it as a form of negative optimism, specifically, toxic optimism. A survey conducted by SWS from June 3 to 6 2020, about adult joblessness, topped it all. Its results showed that it reached a record high of 45.5%. Despite of this, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque was “delighted” that not everyone lost their jobs and that Filipinos showed “resiliency.” This caused an uproar and the spokesperson was accused of embodying toxic optimism (Malasig, 2020). Toxic optimism, as defined by Quintero and Long (2019), is the “overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.” They added that it may also lead to shame, suppressed emotions, and isolation and relational problems. They also explained that being positive all the time becomes negative when this attitude is used to suppress emotions such as resentment, sadness, or anger. One example of toxic optimism is the issue about the statement of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque. His remarks about joblessness didn’t sit well on some Filipinos. For them it clearly showed him embodying toxic optimism. Even though there are a handful research about unrealistic optimism, toxic optimism seemed to be a new one for everyone. The level of its negativity is a “step beyond unrealistic

optimism,” as what Cox suggested. Very few literatures but it had an evident impact on everyone’s daily life, especially during this pandemic. In accordance with this, the researchers decided to make the Panukat ng Positibong Pananaw ng mga Pilipino which aims to measure the toxic optimism of Filipinos. It is a Likerttype scale developed thru exploratory-sequential research design, a mixed method with qualitative design as phase one and quantitative research as phase two. Experts on the subject will be interviewed to have a more profound knowledge about it. This is due to the fact that there are limited literatures discussing the topic. Item development follows. To test the scale, convergent validity and test-retest reliability test will be utilized.

Statement of the Problem This study aims to establish a scale which measures the toxic positivity/optimism of Filipinos. Specifically, it aims to know the following: 1. How does experts view toxic optimism? 2. At what extent can we consider optimism not toxic? Are there determinants of toxic optimism? 3. What are the indicators of toxic optimism? What items are generated from these indicators? 4. What are the results of the preliminary test? 5. Is the Filipino Toxic Optimism Questionnaire valid and reliable?

Objectives of the Study In general, this study aims to establish a scale which measures the toxic positivity/optimism among Filipinos. Specifically, it aims: 1. To know how the experts view toxic positivity/optimism. 2. To know if there are determinants of the said behavior and to know if up to what extent can we consider optimism not toxic.

3. To know how valid and reliable the Panukat ng Positibong Pananaw ng mga Pilipino is.

Significance of the Study This study will provide information about toxic positivity and scale development. The outcome of this research might be significant to the following: The Participants. This study will give participants an idea on some of the aspects of toxic optimism. Additionally, taking the test will also help them know if they have toxic optimism or not. Psychology Practitioners. The scale that will be developed and validated can be used to test if there’s a prevalence of the said trait. The information gathered can be used by professionals as reference for further studies and researches. Future Research. This research, specifically the scale, will help future researches in terms of providing additional source of information about toxic optimism. Furthermore, the scale that will be developed may be used as an instrument for these future researches and may also be a subject for further validation.

Time and Place of the Study The development of the scale will take place via online process during this pandemic. This will cater Filipinos living in the Philippines by the time the study is being conducted. The researchers decided to utilize Google Form in order to gather the data. This is the simplest way to start creating or building a form or survey which can be spread online. It’s easy to use for both the researchers and their respondents. Added to it, the form can easily be accessed thru smart phones, given that it has internet connection or mobile data.

Scope and Limitation of the Study The focus of this study is mainly the development of a scale which will measure toxic positivity. Added to it, the procedures on how the scale was developed, data gathering, the

research design, the participants of the study, testing the reliability and validity of the test developed and the time-frame will be discussed in the research. The researchers will start by gathering data needed thru online interviews from the experts. Filipino’s will be the participants of this study. The data will be gathered thru online assessment, on both qualitative and quantitative phase. Exploratory-sequential mixed method is utilized in this study. It is a type of mixed method where qualitative phase is used prior to the quantitative phase. In order to test the validity and reliability of the scale, the researchers decided to use the convergent and test-retest method. Convergent validity test is having two tests with similar construct tested if they are highly correlated with each other. On the other hand, test reliability will be measured thru test-retest reliability. In this, the developed scale will be tested once with the respondents, then, after some time, the same test will be administered to the same respondents. The whole study will be conducted from October 6, 2020 to ______, 2021. This study is focused and limited to the development of a scale which measures toxic positivity. An in-depth discussion of the variable toxic positivity will not be included in this study. Its correlation with other variables will not be discussed in this research. The effect of toxic positivity to a person’s life may be included in some parts of the study but will not be in complete detail because it is not the focus of the study. Also, the demographic profile of the participants will not have an in-depth discussion in terms of its correlation to the said variable.

Definition of Terms The definition of these terms is their operational definition. This is for a clear and welldefined understanding of the study. Exploratory-Sequential Research Design. It is a type of mixed methods having an initial qualitative phase of gathering data and analysis with the quantitative data gathering and

analysis as its phase two. The linking and analyzing of the data gathered will be the final phase of this research design. (Berman, 2017) Pilipino. According to Article IV, Section I of the 1987 constitution, a person can be considered as a Filipino if the person is one of the country’s citizen at the time the constitution was established, if their parents are Filipino citizens, if they are “born before January 17, 1973, of Filipino mothers, who elect Philippine citizenship upon reaching the age of majority,” and if they are naturalized in accordance to the law. Scale. It is any “test or assessment instrument” which is used as “a system of ordering test responses in a progressive series, so as to measure a trait, ability, attitude, or the like.” (dictionary.apa.org) Unrealistic Optimism. when people unduly predict that their personal outcomes will be more favorable than the outcomes of peers (Shepperd et al., 2013 as cited by Sheppard et al., 2015). Dispositional Optimism. is defined as a global expectation that more good (desirable) things than bad (undesirable) will happen in the future (Scheier and Carver, 1985). Optimistic Attributional Style. views optimism as a style of reasoning about cause (Buchanan & Seligman, 1995). Comparative optimism. introduces relativity of expectation of good outcomes for the self compared with a similar other (Radcliffe and Klein, 2002) Situational optimism. refers to the expectations an individual generates for a particular situation concerning whether good, rather than bad, things will happen. Strategic optimism. is a domain specific denial of risk based on a belief in having control (Ruthig et al., 2007) Realistic optimism. is defined by Sneider (2001) with reference to Degrandpre (2000) as the ‘tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world’. Realism refers to the relationship between available knowledge and understanding at any given moment, possible choices and chosen actions.

Optimism bias. refers to the way knowledge evaluation has been shown to be skewed in predictable, positive and self-serving ways. More weight is given to information if it favours the self or it supports a desired conclusion (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Toxic Optimism. A new concept which means, “focusing and focusing only on the positive things” to the point that the person tends to reject “anything that triggers negative emotions.” (Lunkin, 2019)

Theoretical Framework Positive Psychology. Ever since World War II, psychology have become a science exclusive for healing which concentrates on repairing damage within “a disease model of human functioning” (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Although it was fruitful, it left the two “fundamental missions of psychology behind” – making people’s lives better and nurturing those people (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Seligman viewed positive psychology as the catalyst of change of focus of psychology by not only focusing on treating or healing but also building the positive aspects of the individual. It can also be said that positive psychology is the study of processes and conditions which is beneficial to an individual, a group of people, or an institution (Gable and Haidt, 2005). In other words, it is the study of human flourishing – maybe in form of applications, forms, actions, behaviors, etc. Benefits of practicing positive psychology may include high self-esteem, change in perspective, improved relationships, higher productivity, and increased success. Pollyanna Principle. In 1913, Elen H. Porter released a children’s book entitled Pollyanna. Pollyanna is a playful and cheerful girl who always play her game “Glad Game.” In every situation, no matter how sad or upsetting, “Pollyanna tried to find at least one good thing—a “silver lining” as we often call it today. She’s so good at this game that she ends up getting her whole town to play along, and she makes a significant positive impact on the people of her town” (Jones, 2014 as cited by Ackerman, 2020). The term Pollyanna Principle refers to the people’s tendency to focus on the positive aspect of things and use more positive words or terms in a conversation (Ackerman, 2020). According to Dember and Penwell (1980), it

may manifest like, “…people’s overestimating the size of valued objects, avoiding looking at unpleasant pictures, communicating good news more frequently than bad, and so on.” From a study in 1980s, Matlin and Stang evidenced that people with a clear bias toward positivity took longer to identify unpleasant and dangerous stimuli around them. In other words, there was no “blindness” to reality as many suggest. In Pollyanna Principle, even though we know there are negative things that are happening in our life, we must only focus on the positive side (exploringyourmind.com, 2020)

Conceptual Framework

Pilipino Panukat ng Positibong Pananaw Pilipino

Toxic Optimism

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework of the development of Panukat ng Positibong Pananaw ng mga Pilipino This study will focus on developing a scale which aims to measure toxic optimism. The components of this study and its phases is arranged in the figure above. The Panukat ng Positibong Pananaw ng mga Pilipino will serve as a scale that will measure the toxic optimism present among the respondents. The dark arrow indicates that the scale will be applied to the respondents in order to measure the amount of toxic optimism present. Toxic optimism, which is the core variable of the study, is the tendency for a person to minimize negative factors in every situation and totally focus on the positive side of things which may cause denial of emotion or even a more anxious situation in a long run.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The discussion of the variable toxic optimism will be the focus of this chapter. It will also give a brief significance of optimism and the importance of test development in the field of psychology.

Toxic Optimism and Scale Development Optimism is a person’s life orientation in which they hold a more favorable expectancy of the future (Carver et. al, 2010). William James (1882) and Helen Keller (1903), as cited by Tenney, Logg, and Moore (2015), believed that optimism is one of the keys to success. As what other published literatures suggest (Anzaldi & Shifren, 2018; Mishra, 2014; Schiavon et. al, 2017), optimism is also a great determinant of health and well-being. However, there is a different kind of optimism in which people tend to overestimate the possibility of positive outcome and minimizes the possibility of negative outcome (Weinstein et. al, 2005 as cited by Bottamane et. al, 2020), this is unrealistic optimism or optimism bias. Unrealistic optimism is one of the strongest findings in the field of social psychology (Harris and Hahn, 2011) and even though it has an initial good effect on our well-being, it will not manifest in a long run (Dawson and Meza, 2020). Amidst the pandemic, it was also proven that most of the people in some of the European countries showed a glimpse of optimism bias (Raude et. al, 2020) this is despite of the fact that a threat of the pandemic was highlighted as early as January 2020 (Wu et. al, 2020). Locally, another form of optimism aroused during the pandemic, it is toxic optimism. It is a “step beyond unrealistic optimism”, as stated by Cox (2020), which causes denial and it may minimize and invalidate “authentic human emotional experience” by overemphasizing on the optimistic and happy state (Quintero and Long, 2019). A survey was conducted by Social Weather Station (SWS) from June 3 to 6 2020, about adult joblessness. Its results showed that joblessness among adults reached a record high of 45.5%. Despite of this, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque was “delighted” that not everyone lost their jobs and that Filipinos showed “resiliency.” This caused an uproar and

the spokesperson was accused of embodying toxic optimism (Malasig, 2020). According to Robyn Gobyn, a psychologist, overly optimistic people may have their judgement clouded and deny an existing problem (Hannah C., 2020) and every time a person denies or avoid any unpleasant emotion, the emotion gets bigger (Lukin, 2019). As what Noel McDermott, a psychotherapist in London, said that this type of optimism “would have us deny the psychological warning signs of distress that are trying to tell us to take care.” He added that “in times like these, we have to take extra care of ourselves.” (Wong, 2020) Since toxic optimism is quite a new variable, scale development can serve as an effective assessment in order to measure the construct (Gidron, 2013; Clark & Watson, 1995). Various measurement scales had been developed all throughout the course of research (Meneses et. al, 2014). It is because measurement is a “fundamental” part of science which allows the researchers to acquire much needed knowledge or information about people or groups of people, events, processes, and objects (Morgado et. al, 2017). Morgado et. al (2017), also added that, “Measurement scales are useful tools to attribute scores in some numerical dimension to phenomena that cannot be measured directly.” Questionnaires are also the most commonly used instrument in data gathering in the field of research (Stone, 1978 cited by Hinkins, 1995) and it allows the researchers to “assess phenomena of interest, such as beliefs, motivation, emotions, and perceptions that are theoretical constructs not directly observable and often composed of multiple facets,” as what Lovelace and Brickman (2013) said.

Synthesis The available literatures suggest that, even though it is shown in different ways, there is indeed a prevalence of toxic optimism in the current society. It is a new type of optimism in which a person tends to totally disregard any negativity present or that might arise in the present situation. This may also be manifested in both interpersonal and intrapersonal manner. Since there are limited literature available, and the construct is newly discovered,

development of a scale is ideal in order to explore the construct and also to gather quantitative statistical data that can serve as a profound basis of evidence and discussion.

Methodology

This chapter discusses the research design, the participants of the study, the process of the sample size and research design, the research instruments and evaluation of its psychometric properties, the data gathering, and the statistical tools to be utilized in analyzing the collected data.

Research Design The researchers will utilize mixed methods, particularly exploratory-sequential research design. Mixed methods research, also known as ‘third methodological orientation’, contains both qualitative and quantitative research strengths (Teddlie and Tashakkori 2008, as cited by Berman, 2017). Exploratory-sequential research design, on the other hand, is a type of mixed methods in which “qualitative data is first collected and analyzed, and themes are used to drive the development of a quantitative instrument to further explore the research problem” (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011; Teddlie and Tashakkori 2008; Onwuegbuzie, Bustamante, and Nelson 2010 as cited by Berman, 2017). In order to gather the data needed for the qualitative phase, the researchers will interview experts on toxic positivity/optimism via online process. This will then be analyzed before proceeding to the next stage, the formulation of questions. The researchers will discuss the data gathered in the qualitative phase and then they will formulate questions that are relevant to the data gathered. Then, the researchers will examine the formulated questions to see if some of the thoughts of these questions are redundant or if there are questions which can be removed without affecting the outcome of the whole scale. Lastly, the quantitative phase shall begin. This is the test for reliability and validity of the scale developed. The outcome of this phase will be merged with the outcome of the qualitative phase and will be analyzed collectively.

Sources of Data

The experts in the field of psychology will be the primary sources of data through an online interview. The data elicited from this interview will be the basis of the questions of the test. Secondary sources, such published and unpublished journals, other theses, online articles, and printed books, will also be used in this study.

Participants of the Study The participants and target of this study will be Filipinos living in the Philippines for the last five (5) years. They should be over the twelve (12) years old in order to be a part of this study. This is to ensure that the participants lived a decent amount of time in th...