A Study on 15-18 Aged High School Students’ Social Wishes in the City of Yazd

Although wishes have been considered as one of the most indispensable concepts with many social consequences, but little attention has been given by sociologists to them. Furthermore, psychologists also have reduced this concept to the just some psychological features. In this study, with highlighting some special characteristics of wishes, we attempted to shed a light on their roles and influences on the social orientation of society. To do so, an extensive research has been done in order to identify and assess the Youth social wishes. In this vein, a first exploratory and interview-based study resulted in 18 identified categories of wishes. Then, we assessed the importance level of wishes and the impacts of structural-demographic variables (including gender, age and field of study) on them through a multi-stage cluster sampling survey among 2712 adolescents in Yazd city. According to the results, family-based and political wishes have been chosen as the most and the least important categories of wishes respectively. Furthermore, results showed that the importance of wishes for girls has been more than boys and in general, the importance of wishes decreased as they grew up. In addition, there has been significant relation between their field of study and some category of wishes. Finally, with discussing on the probable social consequent of wishes, the fields requiring planning and policy were introduced.