A New Pattern for Social Participation of Iranian Students in the University (Meta-Synthesis)

Social participation is one of the important concepts of sociology and branches of participation, which includes a wide range of activities like membership and cooperation with religious, scientific, social, economic, professional, occupational, local, regional, and national associations, altruism, and cooperation in holding various ceremonies. By organizing groups, social capital expands, empowers social groups, and strengthens social trust and solidarity. It makes the society dynamic and its conditions unpredictable. The purpose of the study was to  identify the most important dimensions of social participation among students and answer the following question: What are the most important factors and dimensions affecting social participation of Iranian students in the university?  

The research was carried out with a practical purpose and a qualitative method.  A meta-synthesis methods was used by studying information sources in the field of factors affecting social participation of students. Meta-synthesis includes the stages of choosing the research question and goal, collecting the related researches, making a decision about inclusion and exclusion of studies, and evaluating and ranking of studies. It is based on mutual translation of the findings of studies and combination of translations. This research used the 7-step meta-synthesis method of Sandelowski and Barroso. The statistical population of this research included all the studies on students' social participation that were available in the University Jihad System (SID) and database of the country's publications (Magiran and Irandoc). In this systems, the terms ‘social participation’, ‘student participation’, and ‘participation’ were searched by limiting the search to Persian language and the time period of 2011-2021. A total of 34 articles were obtained and out of these 34 articles, 20 articles were accepted based on the meta-synthesis criteria. In this research, the criteria for selecting articles were as follows:Place of article publication: accepted articles in the database of approved scientific journals on Magiran, Sid, and Irandoc sitesTopic: Factors affecting students' participation in Iranian societyGeneral scope: students’ social participationResearch method meta-synthesisResearch time frame: 2011-2021Language used: PersianDiscussion of.

The research findings showed that the 5 social, individual, collaborative, cultural, and psychological factors affected the students' social participation. The social factor included social trust, efficiency of scientific associations, benefits of membership in associations, and social vitality. The individual factor included age, gender, education, field of study, employment, and status. The collaborative factor included social participation, cooperative activity, and cooperative behavior. The cultural factor included media, television, social networks, religiosity, and culture. The psychological factor included feeling of powerlessness, life satisfaction, self-respect, cooperative spirit, and social tolerance. The results revealed that all the social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of the students’ lives developed with the increase and expansion of their participations in university affairs, while strengthening solidarity, improving the students’ life qualities, and finally reinforcing creativity and self-confidence. Several studies had confirmed and emphasized the findings of the current research, stating that social participation was affected by several factors, such as religious beliefs, historical background, social and economic bases, age, sex, race, ethnicity, structure, religion, cultural values, education, job, place of residence, personality, social capital, and people’s psychological characteristics of. Some emphasized the influence of education, income, and social status on social participation. Some others talked about the usefulness and benefit of participation and stated that people would take action if its benefit was more than its loss. According to the obtained results, the following measures will be suggested:Relevant organizations should encourage the students to have more participation by holding group and team competitions among them.Universities should encourage the students to participate more socially by holding special courses and providing the necessary conditions.