factor analysis of social development’s upgrading and downgrading factors, karaj county, 2010

introduction social development is a phenomenon having close relationship with ways and how the people live in a society. the main goal of  social development is to upgrade the levels of general livings’ status by creating preferred conditions based on accepted values.focuses must be on: reducing poverty and improving the qualities of nutrition, hygiene, housing, occupation, education and fruitful spare time.  also it is a path for continuing to upgrade the  effective  values in the  selected society and improving the social system for using nature’s potentials and developing the quality of  social relations for providing conditions for individual growth in different dimensions of human life and redistributing human roles for justice and social security indexes. it is important to know the upgrading and downgrading factors of social development in order to empower the positive and weakening negative factors.the objectives of the  research has been to determine these factors in karaj county and formulate some suggestions.      methodology an applied, descriptive and analytical research using surveying method has been in concern. based on cochran’s formula the sample size has been 150 persons. statistical population  was 6354 male and female of rural households of karaj county. proportional stratified sampling method has been used to select the villages and simple random sampling was used for selecting the individuals. a researcher’s made questionnaire was constructed and the reliability was determined by using cronbach’s alpha.(over 0.7). expert opinions have been used for validating the questionnaire. for data processing spss computer software has been used. statistical design included determining central tendencies and factor analysis.   results based on the results 52% (78 persons) were male and 48% (72 persons) were female. their mean of the age was 46 years, minimum age 23 years, and the maximum age 76 years. 44% of respondents were farmers, 32.7% horticulturists, 23.3% livestock breeders, and 14% of them in addition to agriculture had a job outside the farm. 20% were illiterate, 10% of them were only able to read and write, 37.3% had primary school’s education and, 12.7% having middle school’s certificates, 13.3%  having high school’s diploma and 2% didn’t complete their high school’s study, 1.4% were junior college’s graduates, and 3.3%  of them having a bachelor degree. in the study of social development’s upgrading factors using factorial analysis technique, 8 factors pinpointed having specific value of higher than 1  naming:‘environment’ with the value of 3.56 ( explaining 16.17% of the varience). ‘transportation’ with the value of 2.28 (10.37%), ‘women employment’ with the value of 2.12 (9.66%), ‘communication’ with the value of 2.09, (9.53%), ‘social solidarity’ with the value of 1.89 (8.6%), ‘family relationships’ with the value of 1.69 (7.69%), ‘asking others for help’ with the value of 1.37, (6.24%), and finally ‘interest in work’with the value of 1.25 (5.69%) which the sum of them explained the total varience equal to 73.97% . downgrading factors of social development were 6 factors naming : ‘traditional hygiene’ with the value of 2.29 explaining 14.36%, ‘lack of feeling need for education’ with the value of 1.9 (11.92%), ‘not feeling secure’ with the value of 1.8 (11.25%), ‘distrust regarding others’ with the value of 1.6 (10%), ‘negative self-reliance’ with the value of 1.57 (9.84%) and finally, ‘self-introversion’ with the value of 1.29 (8.11%) which sum of them explained a total varience of 65.51%.   conclusion based on factor analysis, the most important upgrading factor was ‘to keep clean the environment’ (more than 80%) confirmed by studies of anderson & keoleian(2008), matsui(2004) and ghai, hopkins & mcgranahan(1988), but in practice, they do not keep the environment clean. one suggestion is to conduct related workshops. the second factor was ‘transportation’ confirmed by lashkari (2008). a suggestion for improving transportation, is to improve the qualities  of services and the quanteties of public transportation by private sector in oriented contracts. the third factor was ‘women employment’ which (more than 70 %) agree with women’s occupation, in the research by karimi (2005) is specifically referred to, and in the researches by lashkari (2008), kosari (2008), ahmadi (2007), moeeni (2003), un (2009), anderson & keoleian (2008), todaro (2006), and jackson (2002), the employment is generally referred to as one of the social development components, therefore it would be wise to facilitate women’s occupations through cooperatives and self-employments. the fourth factor is ‘communication’ confirmed by anabestani & vaziri (2011), hajinejad, noori & fazlali (2011), kosari (2008), and ghai, hopkins & mcgranahan (1988). one suggestion would be to use mass media and provide investment to improve ict services. social solidarity, family relationships, asking others for help, and interest in work were the other social development’s promoting factors, respectively. the most downgrading factor was ‘traditional hygiene’. in general hygiene is important for social development and in the studies by rezaee eskandari (2010), lashkari (2008), kosari (2008), rezaee (2007), ahmadi (2007), karimi (2005), hajiebrahimzadeh (2004), moeeni (2003), un (2009), anderson & keoleian (2008), jackson (2002), estes (2000), and ghai, hopkins & mcgranahan (1988), has been confirmed as essential.the suggestion is to increase the number of quality services offered by the specialists and improve the health facilities. ‘lack of feeling need for education’ was the second  downgrading factor. more education has been confirmed by the studies of rezaee eskandari (2010), kosari (2008), lashkari (2008), ahmadi (2007), rezaee (2007), karimi (2005), hajiebrahimzadeh (2004), un (2009), anderson & keoleian (2008), matsui (2004), estes (2000), jackson (2002) and ghai, hopkins & mcgranahan (1988), therefore more investment for better education and extension activities can be recommended. ‘not feeling secure’ is the third downgrading factor in social development. research findings by pourtaheri, sojasi qidari, & sadeghloo (2010), lashkari (2008), rezaee (2007), ahmadi (2007), hajiebrahimzadeh (2004), moeeni (2003), and todaro (2006), indicats that security has been known as a necessary element for social development. so it is important to keep the level of feeling secure for doing regular activities. other downgrading factors were distrust regarding others, negative self-reliance and self-introversion, respectively.   references ahmadi, m. 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