The role of social capital in youth happiness(case study: students of psychology and social science faculty of Tehran central branch)

The comparison of happiness in Iran with other countries indicates low level of happiness and according to surveys happier countries have higher privilege in social capital indexes. Therefore, basic aim of this article is recognition of the role of social capital in youth happiness. Research method is documentary and survey and the mean of data collection is questionnaire. The statistical population contains all students of psychology and social sciences faculty of Tehran Central University and the sample volume utilizing Cochran formula was selected 400 individuals. Sampling method was classification and according to major class the students were divided to three majors of social sciences, educative sciences and psychology. The theoretical framework was extracted from the ideas of Giddens, Durkheim, Putnam, Coleman and Bourdieu. The findings indicated that, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between variables of social trust (traditional and modern), social communication (traditional and modern), traditional participation and happiness. But modern social participation variable doesn't have any relationship with happiness. According to path analysis results, variables of modern and traditional communication affected happiness directly and other variables affected indirectly. Also, independent variables have been able to clarify 29/2% of the changes of dependent variable of happiness.