The survey of factors affecting social trust among students: A case study of Jahrom universitiesʹ students

This study was conducted in order to investigate the level of social trust based on a sociological approach. In this study, the statistical society of the research comprised university students of Azad, Payam Noor and Higher Education Center and Medical Sciences from Jahrom, 370 of which were examined as the studyʹs samples. The data were gathered by a questionnaire and have been analyzed by descriptive statistic (average, standard deviation, frequency and percent) using t-test, regression and ANOVA variance analysis. As such, the dependent variable in this study was social trust and the independent variables include ethnicity, family socio-economic base social network and membership in voluntary associations. In addition, to measure the main variables under investigation, the individual variables have been involved in this study. The findings show that there is a meaningful relationship between network variables, voluntary membership, activity, state of employment and generalized trust, but there was no meaningful relationship between the economic- social base variables of the family, ethnicity, age, stage, education, residence and social trust. In this research, confidence of the students in the form of trust between the personal and institutional trust has been measured. As such, the findings show an index of 17, 75 and 8% for low, moderate and high social trust, respectively.