An Investigation into the Impact of the Presidential Candidate's Televised Debates on the Public's Political Culture and Knowing the Candidates': A Case Study on the Residents of District Four in Tehran

The tenth presidential elections in Iran witnessed candidate's debates for the first time which led to creation of a new decision-making setting for the people. The debates created a political culture and contributed to people's participation in elections as well. The method utilized to investigate this phenomenon is survey type descriptive research along with some field work. A group of 249 people (including students, military personnel, businessmen, housewives, jobless people, etc.) residing in district four of Tehran served as the random sample for this study.The data collection instrument was a self-made questionnaire including a total of 19 questions and with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 83. The results indicate that, based on the respondent's evaluation, seven out of the eight variables of the study were significantly higher than the mean and one variable (the negative points of the debates) was significantly lower than the mean. The results of the dependent t-test also showed that the observed differences by the assumed mean (number 3) are significant at 0/99 percent confidence level.