Journal of Iranian Social Studies

Abstract Social and political participation as essential feature of modernism is very important in modern societies. So participation (in all form of it including political, social, economic and cultural) is one of the main concepts of sociology and political science. The present study is a quantitative one which aims at examining the social factors affecting socio-political participation. The survey was conducted with a sample of 400 residents of Karaj in 2012. Data was collected through self-constructed questionnaire. The data were analyzed using multivariate liner regression, T. test, multiple regression and path analysis. Results of multiple regression analysis show that among independent variables the political satisfaction (beta = 0.33), the newspaper reading (beta = 0.25), the religiosity (beta = 0.19), and watching satellite (beta = 0.15), have significant effects on participation rate. Totally, independent variables of this study explain 0.41 of the variation of sociopolitical participation. In general, the results of study support the theoretical framework the study was based on.

Abstract Considering the theoretical and experimental background reached abroad to the effect that an opposite relationship often exists between development and violent crimes, this same question was raised here as to whether a similar pattern exists in Iran? Therefore this study assumed that higher the level of the socio-economic development in Iran’s provinces the lower their rates of violent crime. The theories of structural pressures and violence sub-culture were used to explain the research problem. This is a statistical-method research which uses the secondary and formal data. The analysis is conducted at a macro-level and units of analysis are country’s provinces (28 provinces). The study covers the period of 1997 to 2001. The Pearson correlation, the Spearman correlation, and multiple regression analysis were used for testing the hypotheses. Findings of research indicate that there is a positive and relatively weak relationship between the socio-economic development, in its dimensions, and violent crime rates among the provinces, but when each of the components of violent crimes index (homicide, assault, collective disputes) were brought in relation to socio- economic development and its dimensions, it was observed that only murder (that involved 2.2 percent of all violent crimes index) had an opposite relationship with socio- economic development and its dimensions.