Measuring social capital of the medical students of Mashhad Medical Sciences University in the academic year 2004-2005 and the factors affecting it

The purpose of this paper was to measure the social capital of the medical students of Mashhad Medical Sciences University in the place they lived (their neighborhood), and the factors affecting it. The statistical universe was the university with a total of 5383 students. The sample was 244. The sampling was done using the systematic classification method, the classes being the faculty and sex of the students. Social capital is the quality and quantity of social relations of the individual in their place of living. It has three dimensions of social partnership, social trust and social coherence. Each of these three dimensions was measured with respect to four types of social relations including cultural relations, social relations, political relations and economic relations. Using a scale of 1 to 5, the social capital of the students in their permanent place of residence was measured to be 2.66. Also, the social capital of the students at university was measured to be 3. The study of the factors affecting the multi-variable analysis, the most important positive factors were the following in terms of importance: the amount of the individual's cultural capital, the degree of security in the neighborhood, the number of social networks in the neighborhood, the married status of the individual, the economic status of the other people living in the neighborhood. The self-image was negatively correlated with the individual's amount of social capital.