School Truancy among the Female Students of Tehran City Secondary Schools

Authors

1 Psychology Department AI-Zahra University

2 ..

Abstract

Bringing up mentally sound human beings is regarded to be one of the most fundamental objectives of education. Given the young population structure of Iran, the task becomes more crucial. This paper aims to examine the grounds for development of performing such crucial role in educating the young. In doing so, efforts are made to predict the effective factors, which are introduced here as the predicting variables. In psychology such causes are termed "Behavioral Risk Factors", which in turn cause the probability of the predicting variable (school truancy) to occur. In order to obtain such variables, a single sample taking process was adopted, and among the 19 school districts of Tehran City, four districts were selected as "indicator clusters".
In conducting the research, 178 students of first to third grades of secondary school, ranging from 14 to 18 years of age were selected who filled out the prepared questionnaire. In performing the statistical analysis, methods such as descriptive statistics (tables, mean-values, frequencies, standard deviations), and inferential statistics (X2, logistics regression equation) have been applied.
The results indicated that samples for both; the group who faced the problems and the group with normal conditions, have been properly selected, because each with a reliability of 91.38% and 84.91 %, respectively, showed that they have been properly located within the designated group.
In the section titled "Analysis", based on the obtained results, it has been shown that grounded on the predicting variables it is practically possible to minimize the rate of "school truancy". This is so because apart from such factors as low academic performance, economic status of the family, and effects of peers' conduct, there are still other factors that have proved to be both effecting and facilitating the occurrence of such phenomenon. These factors, if correctly recognized, can be used to properly control and guide this generation of youth.
 

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