The Impact of Social Capital on the Student's Sense of Social Security

The increase of distortions, mental sufferings, and students’ risky behaviors in recent years imply the existence of fear and concerns and lack of security among them. In fact, the need for security is one of the basic requirements of human being. Since social capital is driven from trust and social ties and underlies the normative behavior, it can have a determining role in the sense of security and so reducing the damage. Meanwhile, the students’ sense of security as an educational and effective group in the future of society is of great importance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of social capital in the students’ sense of social security.The research method is of a survey type. The sample population of the study is all of the university students in Mazandaran University. To this end, a sample of 400 university students was selected using multistage stratified sampling method. The data collection instrument was social capital and sense of social security questionnaire.The descriptive results indicated that the amount of social capital among the university students is in downward moderate range and most of the students who have sense of security are in the low and moderate range. In addition, bivariate analysis indicated that none of the variables of gender, marital status, age and education is significant in relation to the sense of social security. But there is a direct relationship between all three dimensions of social capital and its relation to social participation, and its two subscales (participation in formal and informal), social trust and its three subscales (generalized trust, interpersonal trust and institutional trust) with a sense of social security.Overall results show that institutional trust and social relationships have the greatest impact on the sense of security and these two variables together explain 37% of the dependent variable of sense of social security.