Abstract
This study looked into the effects of parental loss on the academic performance of parentless students who were experiencing issues and aimed in exploring their lived experiences, insights, and coping mechanisms. The study used mixed method specifically, convergent parallel research design where incorporated both the qualitative and quantitative approach. The population consisted of thirty parentless students, most were in the age range of 21-22 years old, with 24 females and 6 males. Further, the results manifested that, most of the participants have considerably high grades. Also, the academic performance is not varied by age and sex. The challenges of the parentless participants have a significant impact to their academic performance since these difficulties push them to persevere and have a positive outlook in life to pursue their goals. However, their coping mechanisms don’t have impact to their academic performance, it shows that it depends on the person who are experiencing the said situation on how he/she will be going to handle it. Generally, the data also concluded that the responses in the challenges and coping mechanisms of the parentless participants in the qualitative data gathering and quantitative data gathering were linked to each other. Hence, this study converged in the gathering and analyzing part of the data, and also the parallel have been seen in their respective response in the challenges that being encountered and the coping mechanisms that they apply to offset the challenges.
