Examining the Impact of Social Capital on the Achievement of Students in Entering into Ph.D. Program

The present research was concerned with analyzing and investigating the social capital and its effect on academic achievement of Ph.D. students from a sociological point of view at University of Tehran, Allameh Tabatabai University and Shahid Beheshti University. In this descriptive-survey study, the research population included all Ph.D. students at diverse fields of Humanities (N=1061) who entered into the respected universities in 2013. The sample size was determined as 285 using the Cochran’s Formula. The data were analyzed through SPSS Software. The results indicated that the impact of social capital on students was perfectly (%100) low. The results of explanatory interpretation indicated that there was no significant relationship between dimensions of social capital (social trust, social cohesion and social participation), as independent variables, and academic achievement as the dependent variable. The relationship between socioeconomic status and academic achievement was confirmed. Also, no significant difference was observed in terms of sex, place of residence and marital status