فصلنامه خانواده و پژوهش
سال دوازدهم شماره 2 (تابستان 1394)

The present study was undertaken to examine the impact of Internet addiction on students’ social skills in smart and regular schools. The population of the study included the entire Tehrani junior and senior secondary school students in 2014-2015 academic year. The sample size was determined to be 384 based on Cochran’s formula and this number was increased to 400 students. For the purpose of sampling multi-stage cluster sampling method was used. The instrumentation comprised the Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1998) and social skills questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed by using MANOVA. Results showed that there was no significant difference between smart and regular schools in terms of students’ social skills. Furthermore, in both smart and regular schools girls had the edge over boys regarding social skills. In addition, findings indicated that there was a significant difference between Internetdependent students and those who did not show dependency on the Internet. In fact, Internet-dependent students demonstrated higher social skills.

Marriage is one of the most significant and intimate relationships of human beings and sexual satisfaction as well as marital adjustment are among its prominent elements. The present study was carried out to examine sexual satisfaction and marital adjustment among consanguineous and nonconsanguineous teaching couples. The research method was causalcomparative. Simple sampling method was utilized and 215 individuals (110 men and 105 women) were selected from school districts of 10 and 19 in Tehran. At least of one the spouses served as a school teacher. The instrumentation comprised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (α= 0.94), the Sexual Satisfaction Scale for Men (α= 0.89), and the Sexual Satisfaction Scale for Women (α= 0.85). Descriptive and inferential statistics (independent t test for comparing means) were used for the purpose of data analysis. Results indicated that consanguineous teaching couples had less sexual satisfaction than nonconsanguineous ones; however, no significant difference was observed between the two groups regarding marital adjustment. Generally speaking, the findings of the study showed that consanguineous couples had higher satisfactory relationships than nonconsanguineous ones.

Price of education affects the demand for education and it is expected that increase in the price of educational goods and services results in low demand for education. Hence, governments make efforts to increase the educational coverage of the population through reducing the education costs and even providing school enrollment subsidies to low-income families. Appropriate economic policies are owed to a clear understanding of decision-making mechanisms within the household in relationship to appropriating resources to different expenditures, including general education. One way of obtaining such understanding would be estimate the price elasticity of demand for public education using the data on urban family income and the Rotterdom demand system. It is worth mentioning that households were classified into ten income groups. Using the data available for the period of 2007-2012, the price elasticities were found to be negative and they abide by the law of demand. The demand for public education in families belonging to groups one to six was elastic (responsive to price changes) and the demand in families belonging to groups seven to ten was inelastic. In fact, demand for education in low-income households (except for group eight) was more elastic than that of the privileged households. Any increase in the price of education decreases, as much as the difference in the educational expenditures, the demand for public education by both the low and high-income groups.

Conducting comparative studies in education has a long-lasting background in many societies; however, in the last few decades, the tremendous growth of Information and Communication Technology alongside researchers’ interest in broadening their knowledge of the role of education systems in socio-economic development of countries have yielded a growth in comparative research in all humanities disciplines. Hence, awareness of the theories, methods as well as rules applied in comparative studies is of vital importance. Nevertheless, comparative educational studies in Iran have been confined to a superficial understanding of the similarities and differences between education systems. Therefore, the present article aims at introducing new methods of research in comparative educational studies. The paper starts with an introduction to the comparative studies. Next, the characteristics of comparative research are explained. The main part of the paper elaborates on John Stuart Mill comparative research Method of Agreement, Method of Difference, and Boolean Algebra Method, respectively. The paper would end with a brief comparison of these methods and a conclusion.

The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of hidden curriculum on gifted students’ sociability in Tehran. The study was carried out in 2013-2014 academic year. In this applied research the research design was descriptive-correlational. The instrumentation comprised a 70-item researchermade questionnaire whose validity was approved by specialists and whose validity was calculated to be 0.78 using Cronbach’s alpha. The population of the study and the sample size comprised 4528 and 360 students, respectively. For the purpose of data analysis Pearson correlation coefficient, comparison of means, and one-way analysis of variance were utilized. Results indicated that there was a significant relationship between students’ sociability and the schools’ norms and values. In addition, a reverse association was found between students’ sociability and the teacher-principal-parent relations. The relations among teachers as well as the relations among parents did not have much influence on students’ sociability. However, a significant association was observed between relationships among students and their sociability. Furthermore, a relatively weak association was found between gifted student’s attitude toward their giftedness label and their sociability.

A grasp of various social factors which influence adolescents’ identity can prevent identity crisis. Hence, the present study was undertaken to investigate the impact of peers, mass media, and school performance on adolescents’ identity. In this survey the population of the study included the entire high school students in Tehran (94000 students). The sample size was determined to be 382 based on Cochran’s formula and random multi-stage cluster sampling method was used. The instrumentation comprised a researcher-made questionnaire with desirable validity and reliability. Correlation coefficient and regression analysis were used for the purpose of testing the hypotheses. Correlation results indicated that there was a significant relationship between social factors (peers, mass media, and school) and adolescents’ identity (sig. = 0.000). The highest association was observed between peers and identity (r= 0.501). School came next (r = 0.412) and mass media showed the weakest correlation (r=0.332). Moreover, results of regression analysis showed that the aforementioned social factors could explain the variance in adolescents’ identity. More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in school performance, peers and mass media, in turn, leads to a 0.211, 0.321, and 0.2 standard deviation increase in adolescents’ identity.