Study of the Relationship between the Extent of Watching Persian Language Satellite TV Channels and the Preferred TV Programs and Religious Obligation among mothers and Daughters in Golpayegan City

Present paper studies the relationship between the extent of watching Persian language satellite TV channels and the preferred satellite TV programs and the level of religious obligation among mothers and daughters in Golpaigan city based on assumptions of cultivation theory and Stark and Glock’s model of religiosity. Present survey study was conducted on 380 mothers and daughters (190 mothers and 190 daughters) using a simple random sampling technique. Results from the research showed that there was a significant difference between mothers and daughters with respect to the extent of religious obligation and its dimensions (ideological, consequential and ritualistic) in that mothers showed more religious obligation. Also there was a significant inverse relationship between the extent of watching satellite TV channels and religious obligation and its consequential (-0.44), ritualistic (-0.376) and ideological (-0.310) dimensions and the strength of this inverse relationship was higher in daughters than that in mothers. Also there was a significant relationship between the types of satellite programs being watched by the subjects in that those with higher religious obligation tended to watch programs with scientific nature. Finally the results form multi-variate regression test showed that the extent of watching satellite TV channels and the type of preferred programs explained 25% of variance of religious obligation in mothers and daughters in total. Thus it can be concluded that one of the variables explaining the variance in religious behaviour is the extent of watching satellite TV programs.