No abstract

As a response to the Philippine government’s prolonged community quarantine measure to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, educational institutions have shifted their mode of teaching and learning towards distance education despite resistance from various sectors. This paper examines the ways an educational provider taps elements of its social capital such as closure and reputation, to establish enforceable trust from clients and their network to enroll in online learning; in addition, it explores the factors that clients consider in deciding to enroll their children in online distance learning. This study is informed by James Coleman’s and Ronald Burt’s conceptions of closure, trust, and reputation. It employs a case study approach, focusing on a Philippine Catholic parochial high school. Results show that closure is demonstrated through the school’s dense social network with parents, students, and the community through the Catholic church. Closure and the school’s intergenerational and social reputation facilitate the creation of trust, which increased senior high school enrolment, contrary to the pattern of private schools closing down due to insufficient enrolment. This study contributes to the literature in online distance education, by focusing on aspects of the social structure that function as resources for people and organizations to achieve their interests.

Throughout history, religion, spirituality, health, and the practice of medicine have been intertwined but are all united in seeking inproved health for all. Medical organizations and faith-based institutions consider caring for the sick as their primary mission, sometimes drawing from each other’s knowledge about healing to address patients’ concerns. This paper examines the role of spirituality and religion on the health of a populace and explains how a faith-based organization uses spirituality as the foundation for communicating health even as the community avails itself of medical science through the provision of a barangay health center.

This study analyzes the amount of influence that age, sex, educational attainment, socio-economic status (SES) and religion contribute to the communicative competence of individuals in discussing certain types of health risk behaviors. Competence is a product of social experience or is highly dependent on the context in which the interaction takes place. Through secondary data analysis, this study examines competency levels in discussing smoking, drugs, alcohol and sex and correlates them with the parent’s age, sex, educational attainment, SES and religion. Results show that some selected variables are associated with communicative competence, although mostly weak. The parent’s sex, age, and education are not significantly predictive of communication competence in discussing smoking, drugs, and alcohol, but there are significant differences on the basis of SES. Competencies to discuss sex vary. The results of the study are useful to those who seek to minimize health risk behaviors through the development of strategic communication campaign plans and programs.