A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Experience of Women in Jail: Implication of Support System to Coping Mechanism and Survival

A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Experience of Women in Jail: Implication of Support System to Coping Mechanism and Survival

1. What is the research problem?

        The prevailing issues that lead women to commit crimes and find out to what extent the social and psychological factors contribute to their coping and struggle for life transition and survival.

1. What is the purpose statement?

        This study intended to describe the experiences of the Filipino women in jail and determine the support system that helps them cope with and survive the pressure and demands of loneliness while in jail. This nagging issue moved the researchers to dig deeper on the prevailing issues that lead women to commit crimes and find out to what extent the social and psychological factors contribute to their coping and struggle for life transition and survival.

1. What were the delimitations of this study?

        The female inmates under study were from illiterate to college graduates; occupation to being a sales agent to no occupation; from no salary to P20, 000.00 and above; from shanty to bungalow; from illegal recruitment to murder; and from two (2) years imprisonment to ten (10) years and seven (7) months. Respondents are limited only to those assigned in dorms 9 and 10.

1. What were some potential limitations of this study?

        This study was basically confined to ten (10) incarcerated women who are sentenced for life imprisonment and have been detained in the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) from 1995 to the present. It focused on the assessment of the incarcerated women’s profile, their experiences, which eventually reveal their need for support system in order to cope with and survive in jail. This study included incarcerated Filipino women who are psychologically capacitated to relate the needed information.

1. What were the initial hypotheses for this study?

        Phenomenological in approach, the research is grounded in an inductive attitude toward theory. The researchers attempted to “bracket” presuppositions and biases to hold them in consciousness through all phases of the research and minimize their influence on the findings (Braud and Anderson, 1998). As such findings were allowed to emerge from the description of human experiences and meanings offered by the researchers. The researchers were aware of the theory that oriented them as they embarked on this study.

1. Where the hypotheses rejected or accepted?

        Julian Rotter’s (1996) Locus of Control is grounded in expectancy-value theory, which describes human behavior as determined by the perceived likelihood of n event or outcome occurring contingent upon the behavior in question, and the value placed on that event or outcome. More specifically, expectancy-value theory (a) someone values a particular outcome and (b) that the person believes that taking a particular action will produce that outcome, then (c) they are more likely to take that particular action.