جامعه شناسی کاربردی (May 2015)
Students' Modernist Socio-Political Attitude in the View of Family and University Effects
Abstract
 Introduction  Attitude refers to a positive or negative orientation towards an object, a person, a particular group of people. The attitude construct continues to be a major focus of theory and research in the social and behavioral sciences. This paper examines how students' modernist socio-political attitudes may be influenced by their family and university. We want to know to what extent are people's attitudes related to their atmosphere. The major issue to be discussed here is whether or not attitudes have systematic and close relationship to their social setting. People's worldviews are important: they clearly affect the way people think and behave, at the personal, social and societal levels. Socio-political attitudes refer to a general ideological tendency based on attitudes and beliefs about socio-political issues (Hastie, 2007: 259). In this paper, socio-political attitudes are based on four dimensions, including democratic attitudes, liberalism, critical thinking and individualism. Alexander (2006) believes that to form a democracy we need special motives which are counter codes to nondemocratic ones. As he puts it, democracy depends on self control and individual initiatives, the people who compose it are described as being capable of activism and autonomy rather than as being passive and dependent. They are seen as rational and reasonable rather than irrational and hysterical, as calm rather than excited, as controlled rather than passionate, as sane and realistic rather than fantastical or mad (Alexander, 2006: 57). The family is the institution where human beings first experience non-heteronymous priority of the whole over the part. Family members do not relate to each other as independent persons but rather as members of a larger whole where they find their essential identity. For Hegel, this non-individualistic dimension of the family is important (Luther, 2009: 158). Family is the first and the most important social context through which inter-individual relationships are formed. Through this relationships and interactions one ' s mind is formed. The amount of parental influence over a young child ' s behavior and attitudes is so great that some authors have referred to childhood as a "total institution" comparable in its degree of control to confinement in a penal institution or a concentration camp. Parents have almost total control over the child ' s informational input, the behaviors demanded of the child, and the rewords and punishments meted out. Thus they have great power to shape the child ' s attitudes, particularly because the infant has no preexisting attitudes that would be contrary to the parental influence. Thus many childhood attitudes are probably a combination of the child ' s own experience and what he or she has heard parents say or seen them do.    Materials and Methods  This study performed by using survey method. The population of study consisted of all Isfahan University students. The sample size was calculated based on the indices t= 1.96, P=0.05 and q=0.5 using Cochranâs formula. Finally, a number of 360 students were selected as the participants using quota sampling method. Face validity of questionnaire was determined by experts' viewpoints. For measuring the reliability of the scales, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated. In some of the scales, a number of questions were deleted to provide an acceptable value of alpha. The minimum acceptable alpha coefficient was considered to be 0.70 in order to confirm the reliability of the variables.  Data analysis was done using SPSS and Amos software. To test the theoretical model and research's hypotheses we used structural equation modeling. We preferred structural equation modeling framework because it provides the researchers with tools to test the fitness of the model to the data and directly test the significance effects (Kline, 2005). In the tested model Attitudes and mass media are latent variables. Model fit indices such as CMIN/DF ratio, IFI, NFI, CFI, PCFI, RMSEA, were inspected.    Discussion of Results and Conclusions  This paper examines how university and family affect students' modernist socio-political attitudes. The results showed that the mean score of modernist socio-political attitudes among students was above average. Iranian society, particularly Iranian students, have been changing. Their attitudes toward modernity and socio-political issues have been changed. As the result shows, most of the students in research's population have modern socio-political attitudes. In the theoretical framework, we proposed three main hypotheses: 1- There is a relationship between the family communication patterns and students' modernist socio-political attitudes. 2: There is a relationship between the social-political influence of university and students' modernist socio-political attitudes. 3: There is a relationship between demographic variables (such as socio-economic status and gender) and students' modernist socio-political attitudes. The result of a two-variate regression shows that there is a positive relationship between the two independent variables (family communication patterns and demographic variables) and students' modernist socio-political attitudes, but there is not a significant relationship between the influence of university and students' attitudes.    Keywords:
