The Sense of Political Efficacy among Teachers Case: Teachers in Neishanour 2009

The sense of political efficacy has two dimensions. The first is internal efficacy which indicates personal competencies for influencing political processes and the second is external efficacy which denotes personal perception of government accountability.Composing political internal and external efficacy introduces four political positions including political assured action, apathy, protest and despondency. The dynamic processes of these four are dependent upon change in levels of political trust, electoral participation, political commitment, ideological preference and social economic status.Results of secondary analysis in a 200 people sample of teachers in Neishabour city showed that: First, teacher's sense of political efficacy in its internal dimension is lower than middle point (48.9 in a 0-100 scale) and in its external dimension is higher than middle point (56.6). Second, political assured action (52.8) and apathy are the most frequent types of teacher's political efficacy. Third, among other variables, political trust and electoral participation are most powerful determinants of shifting political efficacy states (from apathy to assures political action), that is %58 to %78 of shifts in efficacy states are linked to change in levels of political trust and electoral participation. Fourth, having levels of political trust and electoral participation, it is possible to predict accurately %92.3 of apathy cases and %84.2 of assured actions.