TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 93 Participants Twenty-six women ages 26–70 volunteered. Eight were between 35 and 43 years old and eight were within the ages of 53–61. Five of the respondents were between ages 44 and 52 and two respondents were 26–34 years old. The artisanal miners participating in the study were identified from the barangay list and via the assistance of the barangay secretary. Based on the socio-demographic data drawn from the selected women miners of Barangay Puntalinao, Banaybanay, Davao Oriental, the respondents generally belonged among the rural poor migrant settlers and had low levels of educational attainment. Most participants were mothers responsible for large families and obliged to participate in mining to sustain daily family needs. Most participants owned their homes; however, the houses were located on rental lots, causing some degree of insecurity in terms of permanence of residence. Data Sources A 21-item survey, translated from English to Cebuano, provided a socio-demographic profile and psychosocial health status of each respondent, covering perseverance, stress management and coping processes. It was clustered into three areas: personal data, family structure and housing arrangement. Items 1–6 aimed to determine level of perseverance. Items 7–16 covered the impact of stress management styles, and items 17–21 determined the impact of coping processes on managing life circumstances. Responses were tallied using the following scale: 1.00–1.99 indicating that the given life experience had a high impact on psychosocial health status over the past month, 2.00–2.99 indicating moderate impact on psychosocial health and 3.00–4.00 indicating low impact. Other primary sources of data included key informant interviews, respondents’ journal entries, observations and outputs during SLEs, transcripts from the FGD, and the researcher’s observation logs from her 3-day community immersion. The key informants included the Barangay Captain, the Barangay Health Worker and a sari-sari [small grocery] store owner, all of whom were interviewed during the researcher’s community immersion. A formal approval to conduct a study in the area was requested from the Barangay Captain. The Barangay Health Worker was interviewed about health conditions among the women miners and the barangay ’s health programs for women. An interview also was conducted with a sari-sari store owner who had firsthand knowledge of the women residents’ consumer behavior and lived in a house located at the mining compound. Daily logs recorded what was witnessed and experienced during the immersion. The Barangay Puntalinao Development Plan (2000) also was used to gather basic community information such as the history, demography and topography of the barangay . SLEs were conducted after the baseline data on psychosocial health status were obtained. The SLEs focused on coping processes, perseverance and stress management. During each SLE, a lecture was conducted and an assignment given for follow-up discussion with the group before the activity concluded. Outputs from the SLEs formed part of the data for the multiple case studies. A FGD with 14 randomly selected miners was conducted after the last SLE, focusing on coping processes, stress management and perseverance. Outputs from the FGD were utilized to validate and expand on the data extracted from the survey questionnaires and SLEs. The psychosocial health status of the respondents was monitored three months after the conclusion of the last SLEs. It provided feedback on the sessions’ lasting effects on the psychosocial health management of the respondents, despite the assessment of medium-term effectiveness, not included in the objectives of the study. Results Socio-Demographic Profile and Psychosocial Health Status The general conditions of poverty resulted in multiple burdens, including reproduction. The high numbers of respondents’ children may have indicated that respondents spent much of their childbearing years within