Journal of Iranian Social Studies
Year:2008 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 (3)|Papers Count:11

The study of birth intervals and factors affecting intervals is one of the approaches which looks at fertility behavior of the couples from socio economic perspective. During the last decade this method has received a great deal of attention and the survival analysis methods including Cox regression have been used to analyze these kinds of data for each of the birth intervals separately, regard less of the dependence between different intervals. In this paper a generalization of the Cox regression models has been used to analyze the birth intervals of a selected sample of the married women who referred to the health and medical centers in Ahwaz. Among different results we found out that the education level of women, the use of contraception and the age of women at the time of marriage have a significant effect on the birth intervals. The men's job, the sex of previous children and the period of baby's breastfeeding also have a significant effect on birth intervals.

The aim of this article is to find out the problems of the couples in Shiraz. As the available resources are the key factors in problem solving, so the families are selected based on Bourdieu framework of material, social, cultural and symbolic resources. By deep interviews with 50 married women in different zones of Shiraz, I found that the problems and the modes of solving problems are completely different among social classes. While upper class problems are emotional, sentimental and moral, middle classes' challenges are material and gender inequality; lower classes were faced with gender inequality and economical problems. To handle and solve these problems, lower classes treat the physical and instrumental way of problem solving, middle classes follow a rational and an expressive style of problem solving, and upper classes try to restructure the family ties by democratic and expressive remedies.

This study aims to examine and explore demographic, economic, social, and mental factors which influence parents' attitudes towards children's gender socialization. The dependent variable is parents' attitude towards gender socialization which is includes expectations, gender role, and interests. The theories which are used in this article are Fish Bayn and Ayzen's attitude theory and liberal feminist sociological theory. Data was collected through questionnaires distributed among 384 married men and women who lived in Shiraz and who were selected through stratified random sampling. The results show that by controlling intervening variables (the amount of parents' labor division, the extent of self-esteem, family size and the amount of family income) all independent variables have significant relationship with dependent variable. Also, the relevant variables account for about 38 percent of the changes of parents' attitudes towards gender socialization of the children.

The aim of this study is to examine affecting factors on women's cultural participation in Fars province. In this respect, we use Collins, Bourdieu, feminism, and social identity theories as our theoretical frame. Survey is our research method, and a questionnaire helped us for collecting data. The sample consists of 1340 women residing in three cities (Shiraz, Abadeh, and Firouzabad) in Fars province. To test effective factors on cultural Participation of women in Fars Province, we used the following variables: socialization, self-concept, gender roles, social capital, cultural capital, and demographic variables (age, marriage status, employment status, father's education, and mother's education of the respondents). Findings based on multiple regression technique, show that cultural capital, social capital, self-concept, gender roles, and marriage status affect cultural participation of women in the province, respectively.

This study is an attempt to investigate whether absence of fathers due to migration to the Gulf States in Lamerd Township shows any relationship with educational achievement of their children and also investigates some other factors determining the educational achievement of the students in Lamerd Township.Research method for conducting this study is survey method and the technique of data collection is self-administrated questionnaire. The population of this study is high school and pre university (grade 2-4) students of Lamerd Township. Sample size of the study is 656 students selected from both migrant and non migrant father students (including 328 migrant and 328 non migrant fathers).The results of this study indicate that duration of fathers' absence due to migration has a significant and negative relationship with educational achievement of students. Variables such as age of children, duration of fathers' stay in Iran are other determinants of educational achievement of Lamerdian students.

In this study, it has been tried to investigate the real contribution of rural women in the income of their families and thus to answer the following question: What factors affect those activities of housewives which lead to a raise in the family income? In this research, the role of rural housewives in the family economy is the dependent, and social, economic and basic factors affecting that, the independent variables. There are 18 hypotheses in this research to be tested. This research was based on survey method and a questionnaire is used to collect the data. The sample size was 646 people. According to the results of hypotheses testing, there are positive correlation between dependent variable and social and cultural view, views of family members, family guardian, good job opportunities, level of literacy of housewives, number of children, level of husbands' education, mothers' literacy, fathers' job position and availability of mass media. There is no significant relationship between independent variables and type of family income sources, number of cattle owned by the family, income of the family, age of women, number of male children above years old, fathers' literacy and mothers' job position.

Looking through the investigations carried out, it is suggested that fear of crime among women can be brought up as a somewhat social problem of great concern in most of the world societies. This research has been taken in three stages to explain the nature and extent of the fear of crime, and its effects on the behavior of the women aging over fifteen in different situations. Three stages are drawn up as follows:1. studying the resources and setting up the theoretical framework, 2. going into the exploratory studies and,3. Working up and analyzing the final questionnaire.In the theoretical framework the effective factors on the fear of crime in correlation with the personality and the surroundings were grounded on Roundtree and Land (1996), Skogan (1987), McGarrell (1997), Fleming (1999), Thomas and Hyman (1977), Levin (1902) and Valentine (1990) with the Stand-point of a variety of scientific theories, also brought in.Drawing upon the theories, the following variables were considered as effective factors on the fear of crime: "individual's experience of insecurity", "the individual's perception of adherence to the moral and religious values in society"," family's, friends', and the others' experiences of the fear of crime", " obedience to the law in society", "police performance", "performance of the judiciary system", "the individual's knowledge of the city" self assertiveness and confidence", "capability of asserting and defending oneself', "individual's idea of crime and her assessment of its frequency and extent in her own city or neighborhood", "extent of relationship with neighbors", "religious faith", "individual's conception of discrimination against women in society", "social class", "age", "marital status", "clothing preferences", "approach that the police takes to deal with the citizens", "illumination in allies, passages...", "police presence, dependability and responsibility", and "public transport".Conclusions ultimately drawn established that all independent variables but "social class", "clothing preferences", "marital status", "religious faith" and "self assertiveness and confidence" made a significant contribution to the fear of crime. However, as multi-variable regression test revealed, out of all other variables, only 2 explain the corresponding variation of the dependent variable: "Individual's idea of public obedience to law" with Beta =0.54 and "experience of insecurity on the part of individual, her family, friends, all the L" with Beta = 0.36. Furthermore "illumination in a district", and "police presence not least in quiet times", turned out to play the most predominant role in the individuals' (the girls and women over fifteen years old) perception of the fear of crime.

In Iran socio-economic inequality is high and in spit of five decades activities about rural development interventions, percentage of poor in rural areas was about twice that for the cities, exposing the concentration of poverty in rural areas. This research examined the consequences of rural development interventions on rural poverty, household income, land ownership inequality, and agricultural extension services distribution both between and within developed and less-developed sample groups of villages in Fars province. A causal comparative method was used as the main method for studying the consequences of rural development interventions. Findings show that rural quality of life wasn't in a satisfactory condition in both developed and less-developed groups of villages. Income and land ownership distribution were similar in both groups of villages and there were no significant differences between developed and less-developed groups of villages in relation to those variables. Research findings also show that conventional rural extension services not only have not succeeded in decreasing the socio-economic gap between rich and poor rural households, but also have intensified it by biasing services toward rich households. Similar to the way in which development programs based on the classical paradigm, have led to inequalities in international (between countries) and at the national level (between urban and rural areas), rural development intervention programmes have created inequality and not decreased the gap between poor and rich people in the areas investigated. On the basis of the findings, a number of recommendations were made about appropriate approaches for future rural development interventions in Iran.

Objectives: The main objectives of this study are to describe and explain gender & national differences in health related knowledge & beliefs, and their impacts on health behaviors of university students in Iran (Mazandaran University) and India (Panjab University), with special emphasis on psychosocial factors.Methods: Survey method is used for conducting the present study. By means of multi-stage sampling procedure, 504 students from both universities have been selected randomly, to fill up the self-administered questionnaire which consists of two scales regarding health related knowledge & beliefs ,and some questions about health-related behaviors such as personal hygiene, physical exercise, dietary habits, preventive medical checkups, alcohol consumption, and smoking.Results: The main findings of the present study can be summarized as follows: 1. The university students in India compared with their counterparts in Iran were more aware of risk factors involved in certain diseases (higher rates of health knowledge), while male and female students did not differ in this respect. 2. The university students in both countries were not different in terms of health beliefs, though women compared with men students were more conscious of the importance of certain behaviors for health maintenance (higher rates of health beliefs). 3. Association between health knowledge and health-related behaviors was found to be weak and non significant; whereas a very strong and significant association between health beliefs and health related behaviors was observed.Discussion: Improving health beliefs of students rather than their health knowledge, is an essential step in order to increasing their positive health-related behaviors.