Dating Involvement and Class Interest of Junior and Senior High School Students in La Filipina National High School Chapter I Background of the Study At present, teenagers become interested in dating during their adolescence because they want to blend in. As a result, it is evident that romantic connections become more significant over time. Adolescents yearn for a close, passionate connection where they can freely give and receive affection. People’s desire to establish long-lasting, close relationships with others is explained by the need to belong theory. In addition, the idea asserts that all people “share” the urge to belong to or be connected to others and that this need can improve everyone’s quality of life. Myers (2010) argued in favour of the desire to belong idea that individuals who discover someone who meets their requirements and with whom they can discuss their issues are more likely to have a sense of belonging to other people are more noticeable. Due to this need to belong, it is now common for teenagers mostly high school students to balance their time between romantic and academic pursuits. Belongingness is supported by close, intimate relationships, which tend to be healthier and happier. By involving oneself in this romantic relationship, they can experience feelings of love, caring, and other positive emotions. In fact, Furman (2002) noted that as adolescents transition from puberty to late adolescence, romantic relationships become more and more important to them in their social worlds. This indicates how common romantic relationships are among adolescents. Teenagers begin to develop crushes when they enter puberty and strive to meet and comprehend the “ideal person.” In middle school, 42.7% of pupils acknowledged to having crushes on friends, according to the CEPS statistics (Jin & Yang, 2021). This study demonstrates that more than 13.1% of eighth graders had ever been in a romantic relationship. According to Furman & Shaffer (2003), romantic behaviour among adolescents cannot just be viewed as a problem. When peer and family ties are involved, these interactions further influence how adolescents view themselves and how valuable they are, which has an effect on how they develop as individuals (Christopher et al., 2016; Tuggle et al., 2014). According to a 2011 study by Bernales and Colonia at the University of the Philippines, teens who are in romantic relationships tend to focus less on their academic work. According to the report, students who are involved in relationships find it difficult to manage their time and often devote only 1 to 4 hours each week to their studies. More time is devoted to various dating activities as love deepens and the desire to maintain the relationship rises, leaving little time for studying (Newman, n.d.). Then, this propensity is related to students’ attendance in classes; it has been stated that pupils are likely to miss school at least three times every month. (Schmidt & Lockwood, 2015). Most research link on the relationship between dating involvement and high school students are significantly rarer than those on the relationship between parental and peer relationships and academic achievement in teenagers. Thus, it is still unclear whether dating involvement among the students involved have an impact on their ability to handle their attention effectively in class interest. It is also unclear how dating involvement between romantic partners affects their academic and class performance. In order to address these issues. This study examines the impact of dating involvement on the class interest of junior and senior high school students at La Filipina National High School in order to fill this gap in the literature. The results of this study will alarm the students and raise their awareness on the effects of dating involvement on the learning interest of the students especially on its negative effects. These conducted data will also make the students who are involve in dating to evaluate their attention between dating involvement and class interest aspects. These findings will benefit parents in guiding and helping their children to set aside their dating involvement and divert their attention on class/academic interest. For the teacher, the information they will get will help them to guide properly and attend their students who are involve in dating relationships. Research investigations that seek to present static images of circumstances as well as establish the relationship between various variables using descriptive correlational design (McBurney and White, 2009). To determine the relationship between dating involvement of students between the ages of 13 and 18, correlation research examines two variables, such as dating involvement and class interest, using a descriptive correlational approach is suited aforementioned topic since in conducting the study, the researcher will be required to collect data based on the dating involvement and class interest of the students. The descriptive correlational design is relevant when describing research variables and investigating the natural relationships or associations between two or more variables (Sousa, Driessnack, & Mendes, 2007). Researchers embark on descriptive correlational design to investigate the level of students dating involvement and class interest. The researcher observe that adolescent dating involvement diverts their attention from their class/academic interest resulting in lower academic performance. This is relevant to the relationship between romantic behaviour and the individual development of adolescents. Also, ongoing emotional conflict can wear out the students emotional and psychological and raise likelihood experience of unpleasant emotions that diverts the student's attention more in their dating life than to their studies. The dating involvement, on the other hand, can support adolescents in developing a sense of value. Hence, teenagers will discover how to look out for one another and establish a close bond, which benefits the growth of interpersonal skills to bring back the lose class interest of the students. Thus, this study aimed to minimize the student's romantic involvement so their class interest and academic performance will not be jeopardize in the end.
