فصلنامه رفاه اجتماعی
پیاپی 39 (زمستان 1389)

Health is one of the main national indicators that is affected by macroeconomic variables and impact on them. In this paper, the effect of macroeconomic variables on two health indicators. i.e. life expectancy at birth and under-5 mortality rate, is tested. VECM model is used. The variables economic growth, unemployment rate, inflation rate, balance of payment, and Gini coefficient had significant negative effects on health; and health expenditure and government expenditure had significant positive effects on health outcomes. All macroeconomic variables effect on health, so economic planners should pay attention to health and health care programs and public wellbeing in accordance with other macroeconomic policy-making.

The health services and their optimal delivery have a key role in consistent development of regions. Present study aims at investigating the spatial distribution of access to health care among Iranian cities and ranking them in this regard. In this secondary analysis, cluster analysis and Mc Granahan Model were used. There is a great difference among Iranian cities regarding level of access to health services. Tehran’s access is high, access in a few large cities is reasonable, and about 90% of cities are deprived in this regard.

increase of patient's rights observance is one of the important goals of therapeutic group activities which will have useful role in improving health of the patient. Meanwhile, many physicians play important role in providing better services. Most of the physicians imagine themselves in a position that they are authorized to determine destiny of their patients. In some cases, they have fatherly behavior toward their patients. Although they regard the patient as having sound mind and allows him to make decisions about him, they do for them what they deem fit. On this basis, we seek to answer this question that to what factors patient's right observance and better therapeutic services are subject and what strategies can help increase observance of patient's rights? in this article, necessary information was gathered with use of references available in the libraries and sites in a quality type study and then some questions were constructed for interview. For this purpose, 20 patients, 10 patient companions and 10 physicians (40 persons) were interviewed in Tehran Shariat Razavi Hospital and participants have mentioned their experiences with regard to the raised subjects. All interviews were recorded and written and interviews analysis has been done simultaneously with writing the texts and with use of content analysis. contents appearing in this study relate to increase of patient's rights observance in patients and their companion's view including participation of patient in decision making, allocation of enough time for listening to patient's talk, receiving mental support, respecting the patient's view, giving enough information to the patient, satisfaction with treatment, responsibility of physician to patient, right to ask patient and listen to reasonable answer by the physician, close communication of patient with physician and suitable feedback of the physician. Barriers to observance of patient's rights in physician's view include low public culture, crowd of patients, lack of hospital equipment, small and ancient space of hospital, lack of labor and time, hard access to physician, incorrect procedures of treatment in private centers, regulations of hospital and overtime hours of physician. the studied hospital depends on Social Security Organization. Generally, rights of patient in this hospital are observed in weak level. On the one hand, low public culture and lack of the patient's awareness with regard to provisions of Patient's Rights Charter which requires accurate planning in the field of education. On the other hand, lack of hospital equipment and manpower are regarded as barrier to increase of patient's rights observance with regard to crowd of patients and regulations of hospital and incorrect procedures of treatment in private centers. Paying attention to this attitude can help the authorities create better conditions with regard to needs and culture of the patients for increase of patient's rights observance.

The main objective of this study is to explore the relationship between "emotional perceived social support" and "mental health". Furthermore, the present study seeks to investigate the direct and indirect effects of gender, religiosity, and social class (as sources of social support), as well as social support, on mental health status. The study has been conducted via survey method and data collected by self-administered questionnaire. The universe of the study was students of the Mazandaran University, and 400 students were chosen through proportional stratified random sampling. Mental health status is measured by SCL-25 and social support is measured by the multidimensional scale of perceived social support by Zimet (1988). Almost one third of the students recognized as having proper mental health. More than half of the students received high level of social support, and family was its most important source followed by important others and friends. Female and those who were belonged to higher social class enjoyed the higher levels of social support. Furthermore, there was a direct, significant relationship between perceived social support and mental health, and gender difference in the rate of mental health is proved, showing that the male students enjoyed better mental health status than females. The relations of social class and religiosity with mental health of students were not significant. Also, gender, social class, and religiosity were associated with perceived social support. Finally, applying multivariate regression analysis, it has been appeared that the rate of students’ mental health was under direct influence of such variables as perceived social support and gender. Furthermore, such variables as social class and religiosity had indirect effects on mental health, through increasing social support. However, perceived social support was the strongest predictor of the students’ mental health. Enjoying high level of social support is a source of proper mental health. With respect to findings of this study, it is necessary that policy makers, focus on ways of promoting social support and religious beliefs, and pay more attention to mental health issues among female and lower social class students to increase their coping skills.

The aim of this study was to compare the role of religiosity dimensions and coping styles in the predicting general health of mothers of children with and without intellectual disabilities (ID). A total of 124 mothers of children with ID and 124 mothers without a child with ID were matched and selected using cluster sampling. Data were collected using general health questionnaire (GHQ), Islamic religiosity scale (IRS) and way of coping questionnaire (WOCQ). Mothers of children with ID had more social dysfunction, somatic symptoms, depression and anxiety than mothers of children without ID. Religiosity had a significant role in finding the meaning and hence improvement of health status of mothers of children with ID. Positive reappraisal had more important role in improvement of social function of mothers of children with ID than in mothers of normal children. Religious belief can help mothers of children with ID to cope with child care problems, to find meaning of life and to improve their health status. Further, education of mothers to accept their disabled child improve their physical, mental, and social function.

The aims of the present study was to design an appropriate tool for evaluatin life skills in substance abusers. In this validation study, universe constitutes of all the substance abuser men of Iran. Participants (n=350) were chosen through stratified sampling from all cities of Iran which had a Therapeutic Community, including Tehran, Hamedan, Qom, Mashad, Boroujerd, Khomein, Esfahan, Yazd, Kerman, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Abadan, Hormozgan, and Bojnourd. To analyse the research data, Pearson correlation coefficient, Bartletts sphericity test, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, scree plot, principle component analysis with Varimax rotation, and Cronbach’s alpha have been used. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the Life Skills Inventory (0.92) and its subscales, problem solving (0.93), emotion management (0.90), communication (0.89), assertiveness (0.87), self-awareness (0.90), and self-care (0.91) indicate its reliability. Six factors were found that explain 48.67 percent of the total variance. Life Skills Inventory can be applied to substance abuser men in order to clinical and educational appraisals.

The purpose o f this study is to compare the quality of life, physical, mental and social performance of older adults who live in communities and those who are institutionalized in nursing homes of Esfahan city. In this cross sectional research, 160 older adults comprising of 80 elder people living with families and 80 elder people residing in nursing homes of Esfahan city, all being 60 years of age or older, were studied in 2008. Those who, for any reason, could not answer the questionnaire were excluded from the study. The tools used for compiling data consisted of two questionnaires. the first questionnaire asked for the demographic details, and the second one was Leipad Elderly Quality of Life questionnaire. The study was carried out by visiting nursing homes and dropping by the homes of the elderly, both through simple random sampling. The purpose of the study was explained and the informed consents of participants were obtained. The average scores for total quality of life (p=0.001), physical aspect (p=0.001), and social performance (p=0.006), in older adults living with their families were significantly more than those of institutionalized older adults. For a better quality of life, elder population is preferred to live with their families than to be institutionalized.

Population censuses, as rich resources to find knowledge of demographic characteristics, are used to survey main characteristics of households in Iran that have wide application in planning, socio-economic and cultural policymaking. One of the most difficulties in demographical studies is the composition of households and analyzing the trend of changes during time. In this paper, the trend analyses of household composition during 1996-2006 are studied. Since knowing about what reasons made these changes can lead to make a correct planning, by using some characteristics of the head of households, these changes are discussed. It’s a descriptive study based on censuses information of two years in 1996 and 2006. This study is about household composition regarding the relationship between the members of the household and the head of household in 2006 and comparison of household composition changes in 1996-2006 periods in Iran. Investigation of the portion of the different kinds of household change and investigation of the head of household characteristics such as age, economic activity status, marital status and literacy status in different household types are the other objectives that are discussed. The structural manner of household composition in different provinces in 2006 and the situation of welfare facilities in different households are also studied. By a statistical log linear model, the association between types of household and some household welfare facilities are discussed. The most important finding is the change of household composition between years 1996 and 2006, difference between some characteristics of the head of the household in different types of household and also the difference between the structures of household composition in provinces in 2006. Also some association between types of household and some household welfare facilities such as car, computer and housing are found, by using a statistical log linear model. Although the greatest part of household composition in our country is married couple family with child(ren), the external circumstances show that the proportion of these households who have the traditional pattern of household composition, is decreasing from two aspects. On one part, the proportion of single parent households has an increasing trend and from the other part, the proportion of one-person household, individuals who live alone, is increasing. The mentioned changes that reflect increasing rate of divorce and life expectancies follow several bad results and it is necessary that authorities consider a cure (such as demonstrating special facilities, building psychosomatics consulting centers etc.) for the social, cultural and economic requirement of this growing population that live in one-person households or single parent households.

Today some of the problems and difficulties in developing countries are related to the manner of their internal migrations. Each year millions of the rural population in the developing countries decided to migrate to the urban areas of these countries and this phenomenon has had negative consequences in the cities. In fact the migration that itself is created by many factors is a reason that helps to more imbalances in social, economic and political problems of a country. One of the results for rapid urbanization in Iran is increased migration to the urban centers and the crisis of villages escaping. This problem has many various social and economic difficulties such as crisis of land and housing, shortage of employment, and formation of slums in the cities which attract migrants. The required information has been gathered from the detailed results of censuses for the populations and housing during 1986-2006. At first, the growth rate for the cities population has been calculated during 1986-1996 and 1996- 2006 periods and then through calculating population of each city in the beginning and at the end of each decade. Increased ratio of immigration in Iranian cities during the two recent decades was found. During 1996-2006, 873 cities in Iran had seen immigration and 118 cities were exposed to emigration, from which 16 cities are regarded as small towns. The percent of immigration in Iranian cities increased from 70.91% during 1986-1996 to 86.27% during 1996-2006. During the two decades under study, the procedure of emigration has been reduced in all the cities and also the number of the cities which send the migrants has reduced and the ratio of the cities that attract migrants has increased considerably. Increasing the percent of small towns which attract the migrants during 1996-2006 indicates the inclination to urbanization, increasing the number of small towns in the country urban hierarchy and formation of crisis for escaping from villages. During the two decade of our study, the cities of Talkhuncheh, Kharaju, Kumele, Rine, Asgaran, Jupar, Jirande, Nafaj, Joshghan_O_Kamo, Nokhandan and Dehaghonbeh had no migration, 171 cities had intensive immigration, 702 cities had weak immigration, 16 cities had intensive emigration and 112 cities had weak emigration. The phenomenon of emigration is particularly observed during 1986-1996 in small towns and small cities. During the two decades under study, the cities of Mohamaddieh in Tehran province and Masjed Soleiamn (a medium city) in Khuzestan province had maintained the procedure of their emigration. This problem expresses the continuance of emigration in those cities. During 1996-2006, the secondary cities and large cities in the country had more immigration due to the existence of the employment and abundant facilities and services compared to the last decade. During 1996-2006, immigration was increased in large cities. The highest level of immigration in large cities is related to Karaj, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz. These cities have made difficult easy access to the facilities and services for the suburbs due to attraction of social and economic services and caused imbalance in access for optimum distribution of the facilities. In other word, they have created a kind of imbalance in the national level and they have caused to attract the migrants toward themselves. Tehran with concentrating the economic, social and political facilities and other services as well as being influenced by international economic and technological changes can dedicate the most ratios of migrants to itself at the country.

In this research, attractive and repulsive factors of Iranian society in comparison with developed societies, from the viewpoints of high school students of Tehran, have been studied. Immigration is a very complicated process which is correlated to many factors such as cultural, occupational, economic, educational-scientific, political, and even ideological. All above mentioned factors will cause people to leave a geographical and historic background that shape their cultural and social identity and seek to refuge in a different country to live in. Losing elites is not only brain drain in its physical form but also the main problem is formation of idea of escape and an inner tendency to leave the country. At the present conditions, immigration and brain drain have huge economic, political, and cultural expenditures for the country of origin, including our country. Pre-university students of Tehran have been selected as statistical population. A sample of 800 students selected randomly and their information had been gathered by a questionnaire whose Cronbach’s alpha was 86%. Repulsive and attractive factors of origin and destination countries can be categorized as follows: Scientific, Economic, Cultural, Social, and Political, and Managerial factors. Research results show positive view toward emigration, and this tendency is greater among those students whose grade point average and their families’ education level are higher.

The demand structure for five commodity groups including foods and drinks, clothing, housing, health and recreation, and educational services was analyzed based on the time series data of the household consumption expenditures during period 1966-2007. A linear approximation of almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS) was estimated by SURE method in order to obtain demand function and elasticity. Income elasticity for all the groups were positive and more than one excepted for educational services. Furthermore, all of the own-price elasticities were negative and theoretically consistent. Cross price elasticities estimates indicated that health and educational services are substitutes for foods but housing and clothing are complement for it

Although unemployment is mostly considered as an economic and social problem, unemployment duration in this manner is usually more important than rate of unemployment and absolute number of unemployed. Hence, it is possible to imagine the conditions that high rate of unemployment and short term unemployment duration occurs at the same time. This paper aims to seek those factors affecting unemployment duration. The statistical population used for the analysis was collected from the Labour and Social Work Affair Organization in Yazd province, which includes 68096 job seekers recorded during the years of Third Development Plan of Iran (2000-2004). Using questionnaires, a sample of 426 was studied. The Weibull Model, Exponential, Log-Normal as well as Log-Logistic models are also used for the analysis of the collected data. Log-Logistic model has explained unemployment duration much better than other models (i.e. Weibull Model, Exponential and Log-Normal models). In addition, age (with the positive effect), number of household persons, years of job experience, and educational level (with the negative effect) had a significant effect on unemployment duration. These means that highly educated persons, as well as years of job experience decrease average unemployment duration. However, marital status and gender had no significant effect on unemployment durations. Every policy that used for the reduction of unemployment duration in labour market should consider age, education, and skill.

The leisure time is appeared to be new social area which have been conceptualized and defined as product of modernity within the context of social and cultural changes and increasing consumption culture. The study of leisure time as a socio-cultural process and investigating its distinctions in terms of various patterns of social inequality is a novel interest in the sociology of leisure time. Therefore, regarding the young structure of Iranian population and the importance of inquiring social characteristics of leisure patterns, this paper concerns to study the patterns of management of leisure time and different forms of social inequality affecting it among Iranian young people (15-29 years old). This study is based on secondary analysis of data extracted from the national survey of socio-economic characteristics of Iranian households in 2001 Statistics Center of Iran. Findings and The results emphasize on symbolic importance of leisure in youth lives and its significant relationship with the different forms of social inequality in society studied, that is, the context in which the youth have different access to leisure opportunities and chances, and the different styles of leisure are experiences in terms of the forms of social inequality such as spatial, gender, ethnic, and class inequalities.

Dualism between structure and action is one of the most important subjects in all of sociological paradigms and sociologists paid attention to poverty and its individual or structural causes. This article investigates the relationship between human agency and poverty. The research is carried out in two regions of Esfahan and the main tool is questionnaire. The sample size is 191. There is statistically significant correlation between individual characteristics and economic situation. Individual characters explain 12.8 percent of variation in economic condition. Human agency has an important influence on human’s economic situation along with social and economic structure.

The opposition between cultural values in the west and Islamic values or in the other word the opposition of tradition and modernity is the base of changing values in Iranian society. Reza shah’s treatments opposed the traditional and Islamic values of Iranian and changed the cultural system of the society and it is continuing till now. The central purpose of the present research is the study of the change of youth values and its related factors. In this retrospective panel study, he populations were Hamedanian youth (n=380) selected by cluster sampling. Cronbach's alpha of 0.87 indicated a high reliability of the instrument. Totally, 21.32 percent od respondents had changed their values to some extent, while just 9.21 percent hadn’t changed their values at all. Of previoust values, 76.32 percent were mixed materialistic-metamaterialistic, 7.11 percent meta-materialistic, and 16.58 percent materialistic. But at present, 55.79 percent were mixed, 3.68 percent meta-materialistic, and 40.53 percent materialistic. Therefore, the values had changed from meta-materialistic to materialistic. The change of values had a significant relation with education, sex, marital status, social class, family size, using mass media, fatalism, individualism, family conflict, value pluralism in the society, and performance of authorites as judged by interviewee (R-square= %47). After a multiple regression analysis, sex, individualism, education, family size, family conflict, and social class, were remained. Value change in youth can be modified by intervening in individual- and family-level variables

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between identity styles and self-efficacy beliefs (personal and collective) and to compare them in Iranian and Afghan high school student boys who inhabit in Qom city. This study is of a special importance since it is a multi-cultural and comparative study between Iranian and Afghan nations. Subjects were selected from all the high school students of the Qom city. They were 231 Iranian high school boys and 132 Afghan high school boys. By cluster sampling, we chose two region from four and two schools from each region. We used Berzonsky’s Identity Styles Questionnaire, Bandura’s Personal Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Kim and Park Collective Self-Efficacy Beliefs. There was a significant direct relationship between informative identity style and normative identity style with personal self-efficacy beliefs and collective self-efficacy beliefs. On the other hand, a significant negative relationship was observed between confused identity style and identity commitment. Informative identity style with collective self-efficacy beliefs and normative identity style with personal self-efficacy beliefs and collective selfefficacy beliefs was higher in Afghan high school boys.