A Content Analysis of the Introductory Sociology Text Books in Iran

The objective of this paper is to use the data collected from a content analysis of the domestic and foreign introductory sociology text books focuses so to describe the relative importance of the foreign texts vs. domestic texts in the context of Iranian academia. Methodologically speaking, I used content analysis as the method to study the introductory sociology text books as the units of analysis. Also, a simple random sampling was adopted as sampling technique in order to collect the necessary data for my analysis. In establishing the units of observation to be sampled from, 20 most commonly used introductory sociology texts (domestic and foreign) were selected. Once it become clear what the units of observation are, we numbered all the text books based on two categories of domestic and foreign books. Then, we selected a random sample of 5 domestic books and 5 foreign books. By assuming content analysis as essentially a coding operation, we coded both the manifest and content of the selected books through conceptualization and the creation of 40 code categories. Some of the findings indicate that nine main categories can be outlined from such a content analysis and from the coding process as follows: 1- subject matter of sociology, 2- paradigms and schools of thought in sociology, 3- methodology of sociology, 4- sociology and its relationship with other sciences, 5- current status of sociology, 6- domains and area of specialties in sociology, 7- sociological practice and strengths, 8- weaknesses, 9- opportunities and threats of the field. According to these categories, the results depict a relatively major deficiency of domestic introductory sociology texts in comparison with foreign texts. Accordingly and with regard to the relative importance of foreign texts to the domestic texts, research results suggest the necessity of revision and reconstruction of domestic introductory sociology text books.