The Effects of Social Factors on Identity Crisis among High School Students in Tehran City

This article presents research-based evidence to examine the identity crisis among youth. The key research objective in this article is to explore whether and to what extent identity crisis is associated with social determinants. The discussion of this article is based on a survey including 234 high school students in Tehran city. According to the results of this analysis, the students’ identity crisis is significantly related to the weakness of internal socio-cultural backgrounds, social and religious anomie, non-participation of students in social groups and communities, the weakness of students’ historical awareness, the inefficiency of the identity-making process by educational and political system, and values conflict. Moreover, the multivariate results of this analysis indicate that the following determinants play the most important role in the identity crisis: imperious process of identity-making by political system, religious anomie, values conflict, weakness of internal social and cultural backgrounds, weakness of political system’s identity-making and imperious identity-making of education. While the first four variables had direct influence on the dependent variable, the last two variables had indirect influence on the dependent variable through religious anomie and values conflict.