Youth's View about Factors Influencing Them to Accept or Avoid Religion

Acceptance of religion means believing, accepting and obeying whatever Glorified God has sent to human society through prophets and imams (peace be upon them), and avoidance of religion means the opposite. The present paper studies the issue with the aim of recognizing "the factors influencing the youth to accept and avoid religion, with emphasis on religious teachings. The statistical population consists of 377 individuals who include high school students of Sari educational organization, zone one, and university students of Sari Azad Islamic University (over all, 15 to 29 years old) and are selected through random-classified sampling. A descriptive-survey method and researcher-made questionnaire with 23 items are used in this research. Having assessed the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, the students completed it. SPSS software and descriptive-inferential statistics were used to analyze the data.The research findings indicate that type of education in families, relationship with friends and peers, religious individual's behavior, mass media and knowing individual will influence youth to accept religion. Furthermore, the most influential factors among university and high school students are knowing and acquaintance with religion, type of education in family, the behavior of religious individuals and instructors of religious matters, relationship with friends and peers and mass media, respectively.