DISCIPLINES AND

IDEAS IN THE APPLIED

SOCIAL SCIENCES
 Definition of Social Science
• Social Sciences are disciplines concerned with the
systematic study of social phenomena. The term
‘social sciences’ is defined as the study of human
society that relates to human behavior and society.
• It is a branch of science that deals with the
institutions, the functioning of human society, and
with the interpersonal relationships of individuals
as members of society.
 Disciplines of Social Sciences
• The disciplines of social sciences include:
ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY,
POLITICAL SCIENCE, HISTORY, CRIMINOLOGY,
PSYCHOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY AND
COMMUNICATION STUDIES.
• These disciplines aim to explain human behavior in
its many cultural forms including the past and the
present, individually or in groups, national and
international, geopolitical contexts, and to empower
them as democratic participants in a rapidly
changing world.
 What is Applied Social Sciences
• Applied social science is an integrated science cutting
across and transcending various social science disciplines
in addressing a wide range of issues in a contemporary,
innovative and dynamic way. It aims at presenting a well-
developed understanding of social research, skills and
professional experience and critical thinking skills
necessary to fully address social phenomena. Applied
social science, therefore, is a broad field that draws on
different social theories and perspectives and combines
theory and practice drawn from different social disciplines
that highlight the complexity of social issues.
 Relationship between Social Sciences and
Applied Social Science
• Social sciences are more specific and focused on a distinct
facet of a social phenomenon while applied social science
attempts to focus on a distinct issue but use insights
arising from various social science disciplines. While social
science may explore broadly their distinct disciplines,
some of their input may easily become applied while
others may remain theoretical. When social science
theories, concepts, methods, and findings gain
application to problems identified in the wider society,
then applied social science is achieved.
 Functions and Effects of Applied Social Sciences
• They generate knowledge in an organic way for evidence-
based actions and solutions to social problems and issues.
They provide learning feedback by simultaneously engaging
the experts and stakeholders that form a social world.
• They cause social sciences to do things rather than just
remain a source of factual knowledge with little or no utility
at all.
• They generate practical solutions to complex social problems.
• The provision of knowledge by social science become moral
basis for applied science to address the issues or problems of
society.
• Communication provides accessibility to
information and thereby serves the rights of an
individual and the public to be informed and to be
heard by their elders and communities.
• Counseling provides healing, courage and
strength for an individual to face his/her issues and
take up the best possible option in moments of life
crises
• The social work promotes social change, problem
solving in human relationships, and the
empowerment and liberation of people to
enhance their holistic well-being.
 Public Perception of Social Sciences and
Applied Social Science Practitioners
• In post-democratic era, social sciences are the
myths of our time and applied science
practitioners have become mythmakers. This
perception is generally based on facts such as
how, through media communication and
research, social sciences create phenomena that
result to an emergence of the sense of new ways
of describing and acting that have ended up
producing all sorts of effects including political
renewals, revolutions and so forth.
• In some areas , however, the public has
developed skeptical attitude toward social
sciences and applied sciences practitioners
largely due to their inability to provide
formidable solutions to social problems.
Others tend to be discipline-specific as how
counselors, social workers and media.
Therefore, both positive and negative
perceptions do exist. Public perception also
changes sometimes depending on the issues
and sometimes on the outcomes.
 DISCIPLINE OF
COUNSELING
• It is a relationship characterized by the
application of one or more psychological
theories and recognized set of communication
skills appropriate to a client’s intimate
concerns, problems, or aspirations (Feltham &
Dryden 1993). These clients are individuals or
a group in a demoralized, distressed or in a
negative state of mind about their situation or
context.
 What is Counseling?
• “It is the process of guiding a person during a stage of life
when reassessments or decisions have to be made about
himself or herself and his or life course” (Collins
Dictionary of Sociology).
• Counselors are professionally trained and certified to
perform counseling. Their job is to provide advice or
guidance in decision-making in emotionally significant
situations by helping clients explore and understand their
worlds and discover better ways and well-informed
choices in resolving an emotional or interpersonal
problem.
• Traditionally counseling is provided by family,
friends and wise elderly. When providers
prove insufficient, counselors become the
choice. Counselors exist in a wide range of
areas of expertise: marriage, family, youth,
student, and other life transitions, dealing
with managing of issues of loss and death,
retirement, divorce, parenting and
bankruptcy. It is widely considered the heart
of guidance services in schools.
• In school counseling is usually done as individual or
group intervention designed to facilitate positive
change in student behavior, feelings, and
attitudes.
• Its process involves two sides: an individual or
group who needs help and a mature professionally
trained counselor.
• The counselor helps in defining a problem and
acquires initiative, determination, courage and
efficiency to solve the problem.
• Counseling is affected by the context and the
sorrounding factors.
• Context, as defined by Urie Bronfenbrenner,
includes the peers, the culture, the
neighborehood, the counseling, client, the
counselor, and the contextual process factors.
Much influence, though is within the family as
being primary context in which the child
learns and develops and likewise for
socializing of children and adolescents.
 --friends' attitudes,
norms, and behaviors have a strong
influence on adolescents. Many
personal issues are often introduced
to the individual by the peers.
 the
interactions between the family and
its neighborehood as immediate
context are also important to
consider. The behavioral problems in
this particular neighborehood require
that families work against crime and
social isolation that may impact
them.
 - Culture provided
meaning and coherence of life to any
orderly life such as community or
organization. Various sectors of
cmmunity, families, peers, and
neighborehoods are all bound together
by cultural context that influences them
all as individual members. Therefore, the
cultural context is a major consideration
in counseling.
 is the source of norms, values,
symbols, and language which provide the
basis for the normal functioning of an
individual. Understanding the cultural
context of a client makes it easier for
counselor to appreciate the nature of their
struggles as well as their cultural conditining
that informs certain personal characteristics
such as degree of openness to share personal
concerns, self-revealing, making choices and
personal concerns.
 --Regardless of a
therapeutic approach in use, the
counseling situation in itself is a context.
There is deliberate specific focus , a set of
procedures, rules, expectations,
experiences, and a way of monitoring
progress and determining results in any
therapeutic aprroach.
There are success factors that counseling as
context considers, such as client factors,
counselor factors, and process factors that
need to be manage well.
-the clients bring so much to the
counseling context and therefore it remains
imperative that they are considered as an
active part of the process. The success or
failure of the counseling process depends so
much on the client.
 --the personality, skills,
and personal qualities of a counselor can
significantly impact the outcomes of the
counseling relationship. The experience
of positive or negative conditions can be
attributed to the counselor. this may be
amplified or aggravated by the choice of
counseling methods that counselor uses
in his or her practice.
 --the context in which
counseling takes place can define the
outcomes. Counselors are therefore
concerned with the environment and
atmosphere where to conduct the
sessions. ideally counseling should take
place in a quiet, warm and comfortable
place away from distraction.
 --it constitute the actual counseling
undertaking. The process inludes:
a. -- which involves providing
warmth, genuieneness, and empathy
b. -- providing a clear and
deep analysis of what the problem is, where it
comes from, its triggers, and why it may have
developed.
c. -- setting and managing goal
directed interventions.
d. -- fostering action to
achieve set goals.
e. --providing
support and other techniques to enable the
client to maintain changes.
f.
--this implies that assurances are
there that guarantee the process is being
directed by the client and toward
independence
• The core values of counseling are the following:
a. respect for humanity
b. partnership
c. autonomy
d. responsible caring
e. personal integrity
f. social justice.
 --counselor must
provide a client unconditional positive
regard, compassion, non-judgmental
attitude, empathy and trust.
-- a counselor has to foster
partnerships with the various desciplines that
come together to support an integrated
healing that encompasses various aspects
such as the physical, emotional, spiritual, and
intellectual.
 --entails respect and
confidentiality and trust in a relationship
of counseling and ensuring a safe
environment that is needed for healing.
--respecting the
potential of every human being to
change and to continue learning
throughout his or her life especially in the
environment of counseling.
 --counselors must reflect
personal integrity, honesty, and truthfulness
with clients.
--accepting and respecting the
diversity of the clients , the diversity of
individuals, teir cutures, languages, lifestyles,
identities, ideologies, intellectual capacities,
personalities and capabilities regardless of
the presented issues.
• The Republic Act No. 9258 (sec. 2-3) defines a
guidance counselor as a natural person who
has been professionally registered and
licensed by a legitimate state entity and by
virtue of specialized training to perform
functions of guidance and counseling.
• The functions of counselors are:
1. helping a client develop potentials to the fullest
2. helping a client plan to utilize his or her potentials to
the fullest
3. helping a client plan his or her future in accordance
with hisor her abilities, interest, and needs.
4. sharing and applying knowledge related to
counseling; such as counseling theories, tools, and
techniques
5. administering a wide range of human development
services.
 -- it includes
parent education, preschool counseling, early
childhood education, child mental health, battered
and abused children and their families.
--covers
middle and high school counseling, psychological
education, career development specialist, youth
work in a residential facility.
 --counseling that involves counseling
of older citizen. Which counselors discuss
preretirement, community centers, nursing home
counseling and hospice work.
--includes premarital
counseling, marriage counseling, family
counseling, sex education, sexual dysfunction
counseling, and divorce mediation.
--offers possibility for nutrition counseling,
exercise and health education, stress
management, anorexia o bulimia counseling.
 -- includes guidance on
choices and decision making in career or
lifestyle, guidance on career development,
facilitation of work-related activities; giving
assistance to clients on developing skills
necessary to plan; fcilitating understanding
of interrelationships among work, family, and
other life roles and factors including diversity
and gender, their influence on career
development and choices identification of
ethical and legal considerations.
 -- offer opportunities such
as college student counseling, student activities,
student personnel work, residential hall or
dormitory counselor.
-it has a several options such as substance
abuse counseling, alcohol counseling, drug
counseling, stop smoking program manager and
crisis intervention counseling.
- it covers agency and corporate
consulting, organizational development director,
industial psychology specialist and training
manager.
 --it include training and
development personnel, quality and work-
life or quality circles manager and employee
assistance programs manager, eployee
assisstance program manager.
-- phobia counseling,
agoraphobia, self-management, intra-
personal management, interpersonal
relationship management, and grief
counseling.
 -- They offer
personal, educational, social, and academic
counseling services.
--they facilitate
career decision making. They aid individuals or
groups in determining jobs that are best suited to
their needs, skills and interest.
--offer services for
couples and families.
 -they work with people
suffering from mental or psychological distress
such as anxiety, phobias, depression, grief,
esteem issues, trauma, ssubstance abuse and
related issues.
--they engaged with
individuals suffering from physical or emotional
disabilities.
- they operate in a very
specialized context of dealing with genetic
information for individuals and the decisions that
come with it.
• Guidance and Counseors honor and promote
fundamental rights, moral and cultural values, dignity
and worth of clients. Rights to privacy, confidentaility,
self-determination and autonomy, consistent with the
law must be oberved. They must ensure that the
client understands and consents to whatever
professional action they propose.
•counselors must maintain and update
their professional skills. They
recognize the limits of their expertise,
engage in self-care,and seek support,
supervision to maintain the standard
of their work. They offer only those
services for which they are qualified by
education, training and experience.
• Guidance counselors are aware of their
professional responsiblity to act in a
trustworthy, reputable, and accountable
manner toward clients, colleagues and
community in which they work and live. They
avoid doing harm, take responsibility for
their professional actions, and adopt a
systematic approach to resolving ethical
dilemmas.
• Guidance counselors seek to promote
integrity in their practice. They represent
themselves accurately and treat others
with honesty,staight forwardness and
fairness. They deal actively with conflicts of
interest, avoid exploiting others, and are
alert to inappropriate behavior on the part
of colleagues.