The Investigation of Social Trust and its Determinants among Citizens in Sanandaj

Background and the present study aimed to investigate the amount of social trust among the citizens in Sanandaj and to address the identification of the most important determinants on Sanandaj citizens’ social trust. Social trust is the dependent variable in this study that is examined by the dimensions of interpersonal trust and institutional trust with the agents of degree of intimacy and confidence. in order to investigate the trust in Sanandaj city, 260 residents over 16 years old that were considered as the active population were selected using stratified cluster sampling method with disproportionate size. It was conducted in survey method using questionnaire as the research tool. The obtained data were analyzed in two parts of descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings and the results indicated that there was a significant relationship between age, sense of security, life satisfaction, shared values and the extent of social trust. There was not a significant relationship between socio-economic base and the extent of social trust and there was not a significant relationship between gender and the extent of social trust either. The findings indicate that the extent of social trust as at the moderate level in Sanandaj city. The extent of interpersonal trust is moderate and upward and the extent of trust in institutions and organizations is upwardly moderate. The extent of trust in groups and guilds is moderate and upward; it indicates that the extent of trust in each other do not have a considerable difference with the extent of trust in institutions, groups, and guilds.