National Solidarity of Kurdish and Baluchi Students in Iran: Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis

Iranian students come from a diverse ethnicity and different cultural backgrounds. In the meantime, national solidarity is one of the major challenges of development policy in such a cultural and geographical context. This study investigates the national solidarity state of Kurdish and Baluchi students in Iranian universities, and aimed to answer this question: how is the feeling of national solidarity among Kurdish and Baluchi students? In fact, the problem arises from the time a student (Kurdish or Baluchi) enters the university, and in its environment, s/he finds the opportunity for intercultural communication with other students, professors, and university staff members that are ethnically different from them. If such a link can increase interethnic and inter-religious social capital, it can turn the university atmosphere into an area of intervention to enhance the bond between Iranians and improve national solidarity and cohesion, but if it provokes greater ethnic and religious conflict, it can significantly reduce the feeling of national solidarity.

A systematic review and meta-analysis was used in this study. The materials consisted of all studies conducted in the field of national solidarity and identity of Kurdish and Baluchi university students published during 1991-2018. Sampling was conducted using a census method and all the available studies were included in the study. Theses and research projects were searched through national databases including the Iran National Library, the Library of University of Tehran, and the Library of Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Articles were also accessed through online academic databases including Iran Comprehensive Portal of Humanity Sciences (Ensani.ir), Noormags, IranDoc, Magiran, SID, Civilica as well as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. All articles were searched by following keywords in Persian: national solidarity, cohesion, divergence, national identity, ethnic identity, university students and faculty members, Kurdish or Baluchi ethnicities, and Kurdistan, or Sistan and Baluchistan Province and/or their English equivalents. The inclusion criteria of meta-analysis were: 1. selected study should be about national solidarity and identity; 2. the study should be on Iranian Kurdish and Baluchi ethnicities; 3. the study should be on the academic community (students, professors, etc.) and related to Kurdish and Balochi ethnic  communities; 5. The study should be published during 1991-2018, 6. if it is a thesis, it should be an MA or PhD thesis; and 7. the study should report statistical data (e.g. mean, standard deviation, regression, coefficient, sample size, etc.). To collect the data, a researcher-made checklist designed in Excel and analyzed in Comprehensive Meta-analysis (CMA 2) software was used.

Th final sample size of the research included eight studies. Overall, 2144 individuals were studied in all the studies, with an average of 268 individuals for each study. Out of eight studies, seven were articles and one was a thesis. The method of sampling in 75% of the studies was relative-stratified random sampling and in 25%, it was multi-stage cluster random sampling. Two studies were related to Baluchi people and six studies to Kurdish people. Regarding the location, five studies were conducted in Kurdistan province, two studies in Sistan and Baluchestan province and one study in Ilam province. All the studies included in this metaanalysis were conducted between the years 2002 and 2013; two studies in 20022006, three in 2008-2010, and three in 2011-2013. All studies were conducted in both male and female groups. The dependent variable in one study was national solidarity, in five studies, national identity; and in two studies, collective identity. Combined effect size was used to evaluate variables with national solidarity and national identity of Kurdish and Baluchi students. In the eight studies, 50 hypotheses were investigated. Table 1 shows the number of hypotheses for each study and their effect sizes, and Table 2 presents the combined effect size of the random model of the eight studies. As can be seen, the average combined effect size in the random model was 0.217 which was significant at P=0.001. According to Cohen’s criteria (1992, 1998), the effect size is medium. The value of Q statistics was obtained 648.828 (0.001) which indicates the heterogeneity of the effect sizes of the studies.