A Sociological Approach to Social Factors Affecting Citizenship Ethics (case of study: the Youth of the city of Kashan)

As societies move ahead in the direction of socio-cultural development, citizenship rights and obligations assume ever greater importance. Using the theories of Karl Marx, Talcott Parsons, Ralph Dahrendorf, Bryan Terner, Jurgen Habermas, and Anthony Giddens, this article studies the citizenship ethics of Kashani youth with the aid of ten items. The research population consisted of all Kashani youth between the ages of 18 and 35 of which 398 individuals were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling. This is survey research that utilized a questionnaire to collect the needed data. The results showed that citizenship ethics was significantly related to the public sphere (r=0.481), the family (r=0.305), familiarity with new concepts (r=0.270), socio-economic status (r=0.190), age (F= 3.38), and gender (T= 3.34). The results of regression analysis showed that the adjusted coefficient of determination for all the independent variables was equal to 0.319, meaning that all these variables could explain close to 32 percent of the variation of the dependent variable (citizenship ethics). After doing factorial analysis on 14 items, they were reduced to the following four: 1) familiarity with new concepts, 2) having a sense of civic obligation, 3) type of family relationships, and 4) abiding by the law voluntarily.