فصلنامه رفاه اجتماعی
پیاپی 52 (بهار 1393)

In order to measure social welfare, economic indicators have traditionally been used. Underlying such measures is an approach which conceives social welfare as a one-dimensional phenomenon, namely the economic dimension. The objective of this paper is to introduce a new social welfare index (SWI) and its trend for Iran. SWI was developed by OECD methodology of constructing composite indicators. Dimentions and indicators of SWI were selected with Delphi technique and were confirmed with exploratory factor analysis. It covers Economy, Health, Housing, Social Security, Education and Employment In this paper SWI as well as its trend have been measured for 1967-2011 in Iran. In order to estimate the trend of total SWI, we have used a uniform dimensions. The results show trend in SWI dissimilar to trend in en social welfare and IEWB. So that, changes in SWI trend, due to more and diverse dimensions, were more than changes in en social welfare and IEWB trend. Some events like a high inflation changes or non-economic indicators have created difference between SWI trend and en social welfare and IEWB. Also, based on SWI, best and worst performances were related to 2009 and 1995 respectively. SWI represents the changes of the social welfare more accurately, due to more and diverse dimensions and indicators. Thus, it can be a more realistic measure of social welfare.

social development emphasis on the relationship between participation and welfare in the society. When people participate in the society, they feel worthy and then increase quality of life, satisfaction and welfare. In the other words, when there are trust and participation values in the homogeneous society, people have better health and education situation. The criminal issues decrease and the job opportunity and welfare increase while participation imply on democracy and social justice. In this article we study the relationship between participation norms and welfare. The method was survey by using questionnaire. 300 Tehran citizens were selected by cluster sampling. The findings indicated that 3/19 percent of respondents have low obligation to participation norms, 5/64 percent have middle and 2/16 percent have high. according to findings, there is a significant relationship between participation norms and its components (social trust, individual trust, generalized trust, institutional trust, formal participation and informal participation social support, reciprocity and relationships) with welfare. Multiple regression coefficients show that, individual trust, social support, reciprocity, formal participation, informal participation and relationships variables are the best predicators for the participation norms.

Well-being, as a key concept in welfare and social policy, has become theoretically and politically more important in academic and policy making contexts in recent decades. However, there is no comprehensive and established definition for this concept, and thus reaching a clear definition is essential for creating a conceptual framework and for measuring well-being. The present review article is based on a critical and constructive analysis of previous works on different concepts and definitions of wellbeing. Literature reviews showed that there is no acceptable theoretical and operational definition of well-being. In other words, wellbeing is a complex, multidimensional and multidisciplinary concept which leads to numerous different definitions with overlapping or sometimes contradictory meanings. After a critical review of different perspectives of wellbeing, from objective to subjective and hedonic to eudemonic approaches, in this article we propose a new definition of well-being as follows: “Wellbeing is a desirable situation which becomes meaningful when considered within social, economic, political and environmental contexts. It is a dynamic situation within which an individual consistently has a dialogue between his/her inner self and the external environment. Perceiving an imbalance between the inner self and the external environment and also lack of coordination of external factors disrupts the desirable situation of the individual. It is also a process stemming from accumulation of the individual experiences through different stages of life: childhood, youth, adulthood, middle-age, and old age.”

Addiction is a complex challenge in Iran society. This phenomena cause problems for narcotic consumers and society with regard to prevalence of addiction and urbanization. Type of research is applied and used correlation analysis and comparied analysis. The methods of data collection are: urbanization data, data about narcotic material and situation of addiction in Iran. The aims of this paper are: study of addiction and narcotic material in urban system, the effect of urbanization on change of narcotic consumers and addictions in Iran. The results show that: Kerman, Khorasan Razavi and Fars are at the highest level in detection of narcotic material. And Qum, Tehran and Isfahan provinc are at the highest level in urbanization rank. These provinces have a high ranking in detection of narcotic material. The detection among mens is more than women's and among single persons is more than married people. The eastern area of Iran has a high ranking in detection of narcotic materials.

Altruism is important force for human moral development, survive and welfare that was an interesting research field in sociology and social psychology. The aim of this study is to examine social factors related to altruism among Yazd and Nurabad cities teachers. The research method was survey, and data gathered with a researcher designed questionnaire. 350 teachers in Yazd and Nurabad cities were selected by cluster random sampling method. the altruism is up than scale average among teachers of both cities. Hypothesies testing showed that age, social capital, sense of social security, city of employement and religiousity are significantly related to altruism. Multiple regression showed that social capital, age, city of employment and religiousity are the most important predictors for altruism. altruism as a social action and orientation in contemporary society is related to human relations and social context. The cultural and relational factors impulse people to approach each other welfare and needs.

The aim of study was to measure subjective well-being in Iranian ethnicities. Iranian community has diverse and fragmented ethnicities with special characteristics which affect interpersonal relationships, attitude, health and education of family members, especially in young people. So, status of these components among Iranian ethnicities was compared in the present study. The four hundred twenty six students from Shahid Beheshti University (141 Tork, 71 Kord, 91 Lor and 123 Fars) were recruited by volunteer sampling. Data collection was done using Multi - Ethnic Identity Scale (MEIM), Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). Data analysis was done by MANOVA, independent t-tests and Bonferroni post hoc test. Results showed significant differences between ethnic identities, subjective well-being and life satisfaction subscale across ethnic groups. Ethnic identity and subjective well-being scores significantly was different across gender. Also, male students scored higher in the ethnic identity but female students scored higher in the subjective well-being. These findings were discussed based on literature and theoretical foundations of ethnic identity and subjective well-being. It could be concluded that ethnic identity and subjective well-being is different in the Iranian ethnic groups.

Retirement domain researchers adapted one of prospective or retrospective form. In the former they ask employees about a variety of expectations regarding their activities and situations after their prospective retirement, while in the latter they ask retirees to recall what their pre-retirement situations and thoughts had been. In the current research these two methods was combined and tested these hypothesis that there is relation between expected frequencies of retirement activities before and after retirement. This hypothesis also predicted that correlation coefficient on the diagonal are bigger in the correlation coefficients matrix. In other words the biggest correlation was between each characteristics before retirement and the same characteristics (not other characteristic) after retirement and also for the retirement activities. The current study also respond to this question ‛which factors formed the perceived activities during (before and after) retirement’. Data were collected by questionnaire both for retirement activities and job characteristics, before and after retirement. Participants were employees of a big company of Tehran, that were in start of retirement. The measure for job characterizes was Sims, Szilagyi and Keller's Questionnaire of Job Characteristics and for retirement activities was Beehr's Questionnaire (Beehr & Nielson, 1995). Finding indicated that there is relation between prospective and retrospective reports. This relation confirm in both job characteristics and retirement period activities. According to planned behavior, persons planned for retirement and select retirement activities based on their planning.

In the adolescence period people come to get to grip with problems, mainly those caused by puberty. In this period, because adolescents come to more understanding with sexual pleasure and an increase in factors stimulating their emotions, they are more perceptive to commit crimes and social harms, chiefly delinquency. delinquent adolescents are ostracized from their family and society, and are, therefore, always under the pressure of stress. These stressful conditions are also intensified due to their presence in prison. With regard to the matter of resiliency in subduing undesirable conditions and preventing delinquent adolescents to become pervert, it is of utmost importance for the factors affecting resiliency in these adolescents to be recognized. As a result, this paper studies the relation of social support and coping styles with resiliency in delinquent adolescents. 120 adolescents at Tehran Correctional Center were selected on an available sampling method. The data were collected using coping styles questionnaire and perceived social support questionnaire and resiliency questionnaire. The results show that social support and problem-centered coping style and emotion-centered coping style have positive correlation with resiliency of adolescents in correctional institution (p<0/01). Also, problem-based coping style and social support are able to predicting resiliency in male delinquent adolescents. According to the findings of this study it can be concluded that the increase of social support of delinquent adolescents by related institutions especially family and also teaching problem-centered coping skills have significant role in increasing their resiliency.

One of the most important topics in sociology is the study of offense and social deviations. Along the offense idea, which disrupts social discipline, social capital is a complicated idea, which is known as one of the most important indexes for growth and development in every society. Social capital is the source of participation and cooperation among society members, which results in formation of rationalized social, trust and participation among people of a society. This study is conducted with survey method between two groups of criminals and noncriminal of above 18 years old. In the present study 230 people were criminals and 230 were ordinary people. To choose the control group (ordinary people), the classification was conducted, at first according to the got frequency of criminal people and the homogenization of ordinary people with criminals in terms of gender, age and employment status; The Logistic regression was used to find out the relation between dimensions of social capital and crime commitment. Therefore, the variable of crime was considered as a two-categorical variable, and then, by the Enter method, the dimensions of social capital were inserted in the model. Meanwhile the frequency of those people in terms of age, gender and employment status was considered. The data analyzed by SPSS software. Among criminals, 66.8% were unemployed and 33.2% were employed, and, 72% of non-criminals were unemployed and 28% were employed. As it is observable, the number of employed criminals (before being imprisoned) is more than the unemployed ones. Thus, the number of employed and unemployed people is equal in two groups. Among all the remained variables in the equation, the variable of social participation has the maximum explication. According to the table results about this variable, the ratio of superiority for the social participation variable is 1.972, which shows that by a two-time change in social participation, the probability of becoming criminal would decrease. The second effective variable is doing social norms by responders. The increase in this variable would decrease the probability of becoming criminal. The results showed there is a significant and negative relationship between the social capital and offense commitment of the responders. As the social capital increases, the probability of becoming criminal would decrease and it had been confirmed in Fukuya’s study. He had mentioned there is an inverse and negative relationship between social capital and crime commitment and the increase in social capital would lead to the decrease in the offense commitment. The other studies such as Kang J (2009), Hawdon (2009) had confirmed this relationship. Totally, in theoretical social capital, the offense commitment is under the influence of social capital and most of the studies conducted in this realm have confirmed their negative and inverse relationship. Because a person with high social capital, has higher relations, participations and trust; however, the negative dimension of social capital, which is found out by theorists such as Putnam, should not be neglected. Basically, social capital can be used against social purposes. It is important to recognize and flourish the positive social capital, which is advantageous to the growth and development.

The purpose of the research is to answer two questions about NGOs’ operation in Tehran in the field of fighting against drug addiction. 1) How is their influence and which obstacles are there? 2) How can their efficiency improve? After reviewing the literature of agency-structure concept, interview questions designed and the research was done by inductive approach. The role, influence, power resources, capitals and obstacles in the way of their activities were identified and categorized. In order to improve NGOs activities, this research places emphasis on participation of people, the role of cultural activities in drug abuse prevention and also on strong support of Iran Drug Control Headquarters for eliminating limitations, especially those limitations related to lack of coordination between NGOs and government or between NGOs.

Intorduction: According to the World Health Organization's definition of health, it is a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This definition shows the importance of spirituality in the elderly’s health. Due to the lack of Persian questionnaire to assess spirituality among the Iranian elderly, the aim of this study was to assess validity and reliability of the Persian version of Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale-Revised (SIBS-R) among Iran’s elderly population. In order to prepare the Persian version of the questionnaire, the standard method of the translation model ‘The International Quality of Life Assessment (IQOLA) Project’ was used for translating Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale-Revised (SIBS-R) among Iran’s elderly population. To determine the reliability of the scale, Intra-Class Correlation (ICC), Cronbach’s Alpha and Test-Retest among 30 samples twice with two weeks durability were tested. For assessing the validity of the questionnaire in three levels, face validity (external validity), content validity and construct validity (exploratory factor analysis) were measured. Additionally, this study is a correlational study based on which the data on Iranian elderly was collected among 200 samples in 2012 and factor analysis was done by the software of SPSS 16. Findings extracted from the descriptive results of the present study indicated that there is no correlation among the demographic data collected included age, religion, education and spirituality. On the other hand, after carrying out exploratory factor analysis, with calculation of Test-Retest (p-value=0.8), intra-class correlation coefficient (p-value=0.003) and the calculated internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha coefficient 0.8, reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed, and in addition through exploratory factor analysis, construct validity of the questionnaire was verified. One of the most important issues in studying the functional consequences of the spirituality faced by researchers and experts is development of the convenient scales for assessment and intervention research among the elderly to improve their performance in this period. In this study, regarding the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the questionnaire, as well as confirming the face validity (appearance), content validity, and factorial validity of the questionnaire, it can be stated that Persian translated version of the Spirituality Scale in this study corresponds to the main tool and it can be used as a valid assessment tool of the spirituality in Iran’s elderly population.