Meta-analysis of Factors Contributing toVandalism in Iran

Vandalism may be considered some sort of mild delinquency which is a pathological spirit in individuals, and leads to the destruction of public facilities such as telephone booths, city buses and subwayseats, mail boxes and sabotage activities like this. Due to itsimportance,vandalismis considered amajor global disease of sabotage in the current century and the modern era. Hence, many studies have been conducted on vandalism, especially over recent years. But the main problem with most of these studies is that they have not fully dealt with all aspects of theissue. Combined research using the meta-analysis method is the response to this gap. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to apply the meta-analysis method in order to analyze and combine the results of studies conducted on the factors contributing to vandalism. For this purpose, 7 factors were identified in several studies and the impact size of each factor in relation with vandalism was obtained. The factors are: socioeconomic status, relationship with offenders, family affiliation, school affiliation, relative deprivation, social isolation, and anomalies. The selected studies were conducted through survey method usingquestionnaire as a tool for collecting information in different statistical communities. In the first step, factors such as evaluation, homogeneity and heterogeneity and diffusion bias were investigated, and the findings showed that there was no bias in publishing and heterogeneity of studies. In the next step, the impact size coefficient was obtained, and the impact size coefficient of anomaly with a value of 0.537 based on Cohen's interpretive system showed a high extent of impact on vandalism. Accordingly, most studies consider anomalies to be more influentialon vandalismcompared with other factors.