An Analysis of the Driver Factors of Universities on Social Responsibility: An Approach to Achieving Fourth Generation Universities' Mission

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that lead the university system to social responsibility. The research method was applied research in terms of purpose, was exploratory mix in terms of the nature and the method of data collection was survey. The statistical populations of the study in the qualitative part were the academic experts in the northwest universities of the country among whom 10 persons were selected in the process of reviewing and confirming the qualitative findings of the research. The statistical population of the quantitative section consisted of 1100 faculty members of Islamic Azad universities of northwest of country, 259 of whom were selected by stratified random sampling. Data collection tools were texts, documents and questionnaires. The validity and reliability of the qualitative section were confirmed by experts and the construct validity and convergence of the questionnaire were confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach's alpha and combined reliability were used to estimate the reliability of the questionnaire. Qualitative content analysis technique was used to analyze the data in qualitative section and confirmatory factor analysis was used in quantitative section. The findings of qualitative and quantitative analysis led to the identification 37 indicators and 5 factors that organizational, cultural, economic, political, and social factors were identified as factors affecting the social responsibility of the academic system, respectively.