Sociological Explanation of Youth Participation in Tehran

Abstract

Participation is one of important topics highly focused on in various social, political and cultural areas. Today the youth as an effective group in participation has taken a crucial role in political, social and cultural decisions of the society. This research aims to present a sociological analysis of the youth participation, causes, procedure, and the challenges concerned. To achieve this purpose, from among various factors and variables affective the youth participation, such variables as social trust, social alienation, social apathy, use of media and social – economic status have been selected as independent variables. Furthermore, the theoretical foundations of variables and parameters of this study are based on the comments of Melvin, Seaman, Limpest, Parsons, Giddens, Zetompka and Inglehart. The research methodology is the survey one and instrument for the data collection is a questionnaire with reliability and validity. The target population is 18- 29 years-old young individual in Tehran's 22 Districts in 2015.The sample size is 390 individuals using Cochran formula and multi-stag cluster sampling. Meanwhile, the research findings reveal that there is a significant relationship between the participation procedures and the variables of social trust, social alienation, social apathy, social-economic status, mass media and sex. However, there is now signification relationship between the participation procedures and the metrical status variable. Among these variables, the social trust enjoys the strongest relationship with the dependent variable of participation procedures.