National and Ethnic Identities Case Study: Students of the University of Tehran

Local and ethnical awareness has highly increased in the contemporary age. Especially, some people believe that factors such as globalization have intensified ethnical sentiments followed by weakening of national identity. On the contrary, some others believe that the increase of ethical tendencies is not in conflict with national identify of people and can be improved. Today, experimental examination of each of these viewpoints in the societies with various ethnics and languages is considered as a necessity because adopting identity-based policies in such societies and especially in Iran requires constant observation and monitoring of tendency level of active population and especially young individuals of the society in national and ethnical identity. The present research aims at examining the relationship between national and ethnical identities among Kurd, Turkish, Lor and Fars students at the University of Tehran in the academic year 2013-14 and their backgrounds were also considered. A surveying method was used to collect data extracted by distribution of a questionnaire among 294 samples and the data was then analyzed by SPS22 software. Findings indicate that despite common popular beliefs among some viewpoints, there is no contradictory relationship between national and ethnical identities. The findings of this research show that there is a positive and synergic relation between national and ethnical identities. Moreover, analysis of the effect of their background on national and ethnical identities indicate that gender, field of study and level of education are the most predictors of national identity and type of religion predicts the highest variance of national identity among students.