Nature, pattern and magnitude of home owners' social interaction as correlates as community participation in Purok Laong 1, Barangay Almanza, Las Pinas City, Philippines

This exploratory study was conducted in Purok Laong 1, Barangay Almanza, Las Pinas City, covering 130 respondents who were listed as bonafide members of the Almanza Ville Homeowners' Association (AVHA). The study sought to investigate the relationship between social interactions and community participation in an urban setting. More specifically, focusing on the members of the AVHA, it aimed to (1) describe the nature, pattern, magnitude of social interactions and the nature, degree and level of community participation; (2) identify indicative measures of the elements of social interactions and the elements of community participation that may be used to establish relationship between the two concepts; (3) attempt to develop indices of social interaction and community participation in aid of future; (4) relate the elements of social interactions (nature, pattern and magnitude) with those of community participation (nature, degree and level) and, (5) lastly, a certain whether the boundaries politically set by the homeowners' association are congruent with the actual network of social relationships existing in the identified research site. The study employed qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method provided the anthropology and sociology of an urban squatters' community for better understanding of the emergent structure of the social networks observed in the research site. The quantitative method was heavily employed, aided by computer software packages of UCINET and SPSS to help the researcher in the extraction, development and testing of indices of social interaction and community participation. The study proved that the variables of nature, pattern and magnitude of social interaction were significantly correlated to the variables of nature and level of community participation. Likewise, the research generated indices which could be used to subject the abstract concepts of social interaction and community participation to observation and measure. The formulated indices showed that the Index of Social Interaction exhibited significant relationship with the Index of Community Participation. It was also observed that politically defined boundaries of communities or aggrupations such as those of the AVHA are not congruent with the existing social networks in the area. The observations indicated that the AVHA is a highly permeable organization whose network of social interactions is not bounded by a 'skin' or by set of physical, legal or artificially set boundaries.