The Evaluation of the Relationship Between Social Capital and Social Pessimism Among the Citizens of Yazd City

Social pessimism is a reflection of the society situation and is rooted in numerous social factors. Social capital is an important variable that has an influence on social pessimism. The present study have been conducted with the intention of determining the relationship between social capital and social pessimism among the citizens of the city of Yazd. The method used in this study is survey research and the sample size of the research was determined to be 385 people based on Cochran’s formula and the samples were selected through multistage cluster sampling The questionnaire was researcher-made and its validity was confirmed as content. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for social pessimism was 0.812 and for social capital was 0.753, which indicates the desirability of the instrument. The findings of the study indicate that the social pessimism of the citizens slightly below the average while social pessimism of majority of respondents was about average. There was a negative and significant relationship between social capital variable and its different aspects (social networks, social norms, and social trust). Variables such as gender, age, marital status did not have a significant relationship with social pessimism. The structural equation model, which also had a good fit, showed a significant and inverse effect of social capital on social pessimism.Social pessimism is a reflection of the society conditions and is rooted in numerous social factors. Social capital is an important variable that influences social pessimism. The present study was conducted with the intention of determining the relationship between social capital and social pessimism among the citizens of Yazd city. The method used in this study is survey research, where the optimal research sample size was determined to be 385 people based on Cochran’s formula, and the samples were selected through multistage cluster sampling. The questionnaire was researcher-made and its validity was confirmed through content validation. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.81 for social pessimism and 0.75 for social capital, which indicate the acceptability of the instrument reliability. The findings of the study indicated that the social pessimism of the citizens was slightly below the medium level, while social pessimism of the majority of respondents was at the medium level. There was a negative and significant relationship between social capital variable and its different aspects (social network, social norm, and social trust) and social pessimism. Other variables including gender, age, and marital status did not have a significant relationship with social pessimism. The structural equation model – which had a good fit – showed that social capital had a significant and negative effect on social pessimism.