Investigating the impact of university cultural programs on students' political participation with the mediating role of political intelligence (case study of Arak University students)

One of the most important aspects of national development is the development and fertility of the culture that governs the society. Studying the impact of cultural programs of universities as a subset of the higher education system in the country's development process is one of the significant solutions that can identify the capabilities and functions of cultural activity. The present research was conducted with the aim of investigating the impact of cultural programs of the university on the political participation of students with the mediating role of political intelligence (a case study of Arak University students). The research method is descriptive-analytical and survey type. The statistical population is all the students of the technical and engineering faculty in the number of 2340 people, among whom 181 people were selected as a statistical sample by a non-random method according to Morgan's table. The tool for collecting information is Farajzadeh's standard political participation questionnaires (2013), Fariz et al.'s political intelligence (2005) and researcher-made questionnaires of university cultural activities. The reliability of political participation questionnaires (α = 0.88), university cultural programs (α = 0.87), political intelligence (α = 0.79) was calculated and confirmed by Cronbach's alpha method, and content validity It was also approved by the opinion of professors and experts. To check the normality of the distribution of the variables, the Kolmogorov Smirnov test was used to test the hypotheses of the research, the correlation method was used based on post-event observations and with step-by-step regression analysis under spss software. The results showed that university cultural programs do not have a significant effect on students' political participation and their relationship pattern is not direct (P>0.05), and the effect of university cultural programs on political intelligence was not observed (P>0.05). But political intelligence has a significant effect on the level of political participation (P < 0.05). It was also confirmed that political intelligence plays a mediating role in the relationship between university cultural programs and the level of political participation of students (P < 0.05). <). According to the respondents, political intelligence increases the political participation of students, but the cultural programs of the university do not have this ability.