The Social Factors Influencing the Level of Social Trust of High School Teachers inKhoramabad City

Trust is the most important component of social discipline and is considered as one of the bases of social capital. Moreover, it is an important aspect of human communication and a ground for collaboration among members of society. Social trust is a key concept in sociology and an important social index. Decline of social trust in a society prepares the ground for chaos and disarrayand also increase in crimes and corruptions. Trust is an element in human society which can be regarded as an influential factor in interaction between people and government.The present paper is a case study of Khoramabad high school teachers and explains theirlevel of social trust from sociological perspective. The datawas collected through a survey study of a sample of 310 high school teachers in Khoramabad.The theoretical framework of the research is based on the theories of Giddens, Durkheim, Putnam, Sztompka, Coleman, Weber, Evans, and Chalabi.The findings indicated that 4.2% of respondents’ level of social trust was low, 89% of them had average level of social trust and 6.8% of them demonstrated a high level. Moreover, the highest level of trust wasrelated to inter-personal trust and the lowest level was related to institutional trust. The variablesof religiousness, normative solidarityand social participation had a significant effect on the level of social trust. In a multivariate linear regression analysis of the above mentioned independent variables, 27.9% of the variance in the level of social trust can be explained.