Bilingualism, Monolingualism and Social Health: A Comparative Study

There are mental influencing factors among students in the educational context such as educational stress, ethnic and cultural contradictions and the existence of political, belief, racial as well as gender discrimination, which can affect various aspects of student life and the health of this stratum, especially their social dimension could be endangered. Regarding the relationship between language, as a fundamental cultural component, and social health which has not been studied in social health research. In other words, the language of different ethnicities can provide unity, integrity, coherence and participation, or can a common language affect health and its social dimension or not? This study aims to answer the mentioned question by investigating bilingual students (ethnicities) and the monolinguals (those who speak only one language). In the following, we intend to explain what factors affect the social health of each group? The method of this study was survey and data was collected through questionnaires. The statistical population is Sanandaj University students and the sample included 384 individuals by the Cochran formula. The results of this study showed that there is a significant difference between the total social health and its dimensions in the two groups of students in favor of bilingual students, and the variables such as age, marriage, field of study, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs and communication skills were influential on the social health of both groups. Also, the results of the regression showed that 29% of the influence on the dependent variable of this study was interpreted by the independent variables. In addition, the communication skill is the strongest variable predictor with a rate of 66%.