Typology of Political Culture of Students In Kurdistan Province Based on Socio-Cultural Variables

Political culture as attitude to politics is one of the most important variables that play a crucial role in the stability of democracies. Acknowledging the importance of this issue is crucial because nowadays political culture has become an important concept in social sciences. The goal of this study is to study students’ political culture in the view of Tessler’s and Gauo’s conceptual framework.

Method of this study is survey. Unite of analysis is individual. Research population consists of students from Kurdistan province universities (azad university-Sanandj branch, university of Kurdistan, payam Noor sanandj branch), whose number is 28448 individuals in different levels (bachelors, master and PhD). Sample size was calculated to be 380 by Cochran formula. The type of sampling method was stratified sampling according to type of university, college, sex and grade of education. The data was collected by questionnaire, whose validity was determined by formal and constructive validities and its reliability was measured by Cornbrash’s alpha.

The results show that 33.72 percent of students had a democratic political culture, 28 percent were indifferent, 23 percent were pragmatic and 16 percent had a limited political culture. Political culture has is in a meaningful relationship with variables of religion, attitude, age, education, space and ethnicity. The result of multi-variable regression shows that nearly 33 percent of dependent variable can be explained by independent variables.The results also show that there is a meaningful relationship between political socialization and political acculturation, that is, values, attitudes, believes, rituals and customs are transferred from one generation to another by family. The educational system, religion, government and mass Media contribute to this process too (Haywood, 1997:180). In the view of Alam, the family, school, peer groups, work experiences, mass media and contact with political system are effective in political socialization. Of particular importance is the role that mass media play in socialization of political culture. At the same time, our study showed that there is a meaningful correlation between personality traits and political culture. Although previous researchers have not paid enough attention to the relationship between authoritarian personality and political culture, Inglehart believed that individuals with democratic political culture tend to move beyond materialist values, develop positive attitudes to gender equality, and have more tolerance about others (Inglehart &Velzl,2005,132).