Relationship between Social Factors and Social Health among Students of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman

Introduction The present article examines relationship between social health and social factors responsible for its increase or decrease, since health is an important factor in all societies, and is one of the most basic human needs in life. Social health, along physical and psychological health, is fundamentally important for general health. It could be shown in one's evaluation of his or her social life and its quality. So investigation about the social health of male and female students as an important social group has been the main purpose of this article. This study is based on a research in Kerman on the basis of key theories in the field of social health with five dimensions of social integration, acceptance, contribution, coherence and actuation. Materials and Methods The study is a survey using questionnaire along with interview with the students of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. It includes 375 male and female students currently studying at the university, who are selected by random classified sampling method. It is worth mentioning that different courses are selected according to the number of male and female students in each nine faculties of the University. Data are analyzed with SPSS and different statistical tests were utilized. Discussion of Results and Conclusions Overall, 51.2% of the selected students are female and 48.8% are male, of whom 79.7% are single with the average age of 22 and only 17% are employed. The finding shows that the average social health among male students is slightly higher that female students and in other respects there are meaningful differences between the two sexes in a way that average social contribution among male students is higher than female students and average social actuation is higher among female students than male ones. When it comes to social coherence, they are close to each other. Upon further examination of the data, it became clear that social trust, social contribution, accessibility of facilities and services, self–evaluation of social class, family, marriage status, employment, place of birth and the major of the student, all are in meaningful relationships with social health. Also 54% of the changes of the variance of social health are explained by two factors of social trust and contribution. In general it can be said that lack of contribution to social activities and lack of trust are two barriers for stepping into social settings. In such a situation, one feels that there is no common point between personal and social values and becomes indifferent and trustless regarding social norms (decline of social integration). Therefore one feels that social fate depends on external structures and not on social components, and does not fell any potential ability for the process of evaluation (decline of social actuation). With this mentality people may feel that society is so complicated that it is difficult to understand and predict the future (decline of social coherence). Therefore positive attitude towards society and even people is distorted (decline of social acceptance). When these attitudes are created one loses his ability and feels that he has no role in the progress and future of his society (decline of social contribution) and so his social health decreases. This results in contradiction in his personality, distortion of social behavior and expansion of fraud, social abnormalities, delinquencies, etc. Therefore social health is an important factor in accepting social norms which enables the person to create a positive balance and avoids unfavorable responses. People who possess social health can face with life challenges and have a better function in society. Since one of the main factors responsible for social health is social trust, we supposed that increase in social health depends on increase in trust to others and social institutions. One way to increase social health, therefore, is to present clear information, respecting rules and focusing on needs and aspirations of the young. &nbsp