A Study of Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation of the Students of Isfahan University

Political participation, as one type of participation, is considered as one of the indicators of social and political development. University students are one of the major social groups whose contribution in the process of society management and socio-political and cultural development seems necessary. Political participation of university students who are considered as the largest population group in developing countries and as the future administrators of the society, bears an especial importance in political stability and dynamism of the society. This paper seeks to study the relationship between religiosity and political participation of students of Isfahan University. We do a field research in order to collect our data. We studied 188 male and female students of Isfahan University among whom we distributed a questionnaire, the validity of which was measured by formal method and its reliability was measured through Cronbach`s Alpha test and the data was analyzed using SPSS software package. Dividing religion into two variables (religious-rituals and morality) along with considering two aspects of political participation i.e., psychological-theoretical factors and the manner of participation (formal or informal), some meaningful correlations between religious aspects and the rate of political participation of respondents may be observed. Findings showed that there is a direct correlation between religiosity and political participation. Based on such findings, a higher political participation may be expected in religious communities.