JOURNAL OF IRANIAN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (JISDS)
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue:4 (16)|Papers Count:8

Women empowerment and its crucial role in sustainable development is one of the issues that are considered both in theory and practice. In this study the impact of social support on women’s empowerment has been investigated. Different dimensions of empowerment are, psychological empowerment, economic empowerment, empowerment in terms of agency, and physical empowerment. Social support is being measured by emotional, self- esteem, instrumental, informational and social network support. Giddens's Structuration theory, theories of empowerment, Sarason’s social support theory and Maslow’s theory were used as theoretical frame work to examine the impact of social support on women's empowerment. Research method was quantitative and data were collected through survey.The instrument was a questionnaire. Population-based sample were women in Tehran and according to Cochran formula, the sample size was calculated about 400 persons. Multiple regressions to predict the level of empowerment through social support, at 0.01 percent is significant. The results show that social support has impact on psychological empowerment, economic empowerment, empowerment in terms of agency, and physical empowerment.Women's empowerment is increased with gaining more social support. Among The dimensions of social support, informational support (b coefficient, 0.37), and support from social networking (b coefficient, 0.31) at 0.01 percent level was significant beta, 0.31) at 0.01 percent was significant, and by increasing them empowerment of women has been increased.

Top of development and urban management, improved quality of life and happiness of citizens, while quality of life is a multidimensional concept covering various aspects. Given that one of the reasons for the formation of new towns in Iran has been planned and well-designed environment for its residents, track this topic has been the extent to which New Towns Development Corporation provide citizens satisfaction can be considered. Therefore, in the present study is to investigate the relationship of urban management performance impact on quality of life be studied from the perspective of citizens. Methods In this study is experimental and the descriptive-analytical methods for sector that field data collection (questionnaire) sample of 251 rural households, are questioning the practice. The results show a significant relationship between urban management performance with Objective and subjective quality of life from the perspective of citizens with a correlation coefficient of 0.802 there. Civil service provided by Development Corporation with 42.3 percent, the most direct impact on the life quality of citizens have left. According to these findings, strategies such as the development of urban infrastructure, providing a variety of services, and develop a spirit of vitality, hope, trust, and social and urban landscapes beautification efforts to increase residents' satisfaction levels, etc. in Golbahar New Town is proposed.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of oil industry on the socio-economic development of Gachsaran from citizens’ point of view. Gachsaran city is considered as one of the ten greatest oil fields around the globe. It seems that with a great deal of oil money gathered in this city, we begin to observe some changes. According to modernization theories and intellectuals such as Parsons, Eisenshtad, Smelser, Giddens and Bourdieu, with the emergence of industry in traditional societies we see some changes. Development in this study is regarded in two fields of social and economic. In social field different dimensions such as urbanism, education growth, social movement and social inequality, and in economic field different dimensions such as consumerism and economic inequality are considered. The data is collected by a questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS using Cronbach’s alpha and one sample t-test. Six hypotheses are confirmed and the results show that althought oil industry had positive effects on this city development but it wasn’t balanced and concerted.

The residential spaces in urban regions are a kind of social environments which have faced deep changes throughout time space continuum, and still have a particular importance in forming and sustaining social relations because of their role in peoples’ lives and primitive terms. There is a difference in kinds of social relation networks among different social strata of urban life with different cultural, social, economic, political and spatial levels.Namely, the made hierarchical system from above factors, invoke different social relations.The aim of this study is the analysis of social relations in sustainable urban space. The research method is qualitative with a predicative technique. The results show that with the passage of time the modern urban space has an effect on social relations network by the entrance on informational and communicational technologies. And sustainable social relations is the outcome of sustainable urban space.

Secularization is one the most important concepts in sociology of religion as well as a controversy among different theorists. According to the results of different studies, some argue that Secularization is an inevitable future for societies aim to develop. Unlike other which doubt this and believe the emergence of secularization in a society is related to the current religion of the mentioned society. According to the secularization theory, the emergence of which is related to different factors such as age. They believe that younger age groups in a society have a more potential of a change in values, attitudes and traditional actions against older ones. So this group has a more possibility of change from religious thoughts to secularized one. This study aims to test this hypothesis that there is a relationship between secularism and peoples’ ages as well as studying and measuring the indices of secularization in an Iranian Muslim city i.e. Tehran. The research method is survey. The statistical population is all 15 to 75 year old Tehran citizens with a random sample of 1200.The results have two parts. First, the secularization index and its different dimensions are in average level and second, the hypothesis is confirmed which means that younger age groups have a more possibility of change from religious thoughts to secularized one. So it shows that secularization has an inversed relationship with age.

The aim of this study is the investigation of the effect of mass media on rural and tribal life style in Gilan Gharb province. The research method is survey and data are collected by questionnaire. A sample of 380 is taken with the use of Cochran’s formula by a stratified sampling technique. The analyses is executed by Pearson relationship coefficient, test, ANOVA, multi variable regression and path analysis. The results show that there is a positive and direct relationship between the amount of mass media usage, age and the style of cultural goods consumption. The mean of life style according to social class is different from gender but shows no significant difference according to education level. The regression analysis shows that independent variables explain 30.7% of life style and education level and the style of cultural goods consumption have the most effect.

Participation is one of the basic human needs and also the aim and means of sustainable development. In this research, we have studied social and cultural factors which are effective on students’ participation rate in student's activities. Statistical population of this research is the students that each of them is a member of Farzanegan-pishtazan organizations and the red crescent of Tehran city who have been selected by a random and multistage process. Survey is the research method and data gathering tool is questionnaire. Research findings show that there is a meaningful difference between student’s gender, motive vocation and educational values, school space, valuation of society conditions and participation rate, there is no any meaningful relation student attitude to the factors and obstacles of participation and participation rate. the results of averages comparison at the objective level show that there is a meaningful difference between participation and the type of gender, type of organizations and participation rate and only in the athletic, scientific and skillful parts, the Farzanegan-pishtazan group has meaningful difference with the other NGOS. In comparison with averages at the subjective level there is a meaningful difference between type of NGOS and student attitude about participation factors, the Farzaneganpishtazan group has with the other groups. But there is not any meaningful difference between girls and boys, obstacles of participation between groups. The results of regression analysis show that variables vocation and educational values have more anticipating power than other variables.

The aim of this study is the investigation of mass media effect on youth’s national unity and their devotion toward Iranian identity. The research method is survey and data are collected by questionnaire. The statistical population is the youth in Ahwaz city and a sample of 400 is taken from Lean table by a multi-staged stratified sampling technique. The results show that there is a significant relationship between youths’ national unity, their devotion toward Iranian identity (dependent variable) and the amount watching Iran television networks, the amount of watching satellite networks, the amount of internet usage and age (independent variables). And also there isn’t any significant relationship between the dependent variable and other independent variables such as the amount of radio usage, paper and magazine reading, going to the movies and gender. The result of step by step regression shows that the amount of watching satellite networks has the most effect on youths’ national unit and their devotion toward Iranian identity.