Survey of the frequency of superstition and its related factors among students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences in 2013

One of the components of every culture is beliefs. Some of these beliefs are based on actual proven and solid foundation. Some of them are superstitions which are baseless and have been accepted by people. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of belief in superstitions and its related factors among the students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. This was a study with mixed method design which was a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative section was cross-sectional and the qualitative part of the study included views of the experts on the psychological, social, religious and political fields. In this study we used a valid and reliable researcher-made superstition questionnaire. The questionnaire had 2 parts: belief in superstitions and tendency to superstition. We used stratified random sampling method and the sample size was estimated to be 386 students according to Cochran's formula. Data were entered into SPSS-20 software and analyzed by ANOA and chi-square test. In this study 184(54%) students were male and 157 (46%) were female with the mean age of 20.26 ± 1.60 years. 309 students (90.6%) lived in urban areas, 54 (15.8%) had a tendency to superstition, 46 (13.5%) had high level and 122 (35.8%) had low level of superstitious beliefs. In this study, there was a significant relationship between gender (P=0.037) and age (p<0.001) with belief in superstitions. In addition, there was a significant relationship between residential area with tendency to superstition and belief in superstitions (p<0.001), while, there was no significant relationship between gender and tendency to superstition (P=0.861). Considering the high frequency rate (64.2%) of belief in superstitions among the students as future community makers, comprehensive planning to decrease belief in superstition by means of various systems, such as universities, television and other relevant organizations, is essential.