Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract Regarding the importance of maintaining and enhancing family members relationships during the period of imprisonment, the present paper uses a survey method to examine the relationships between stigma (independent variable), the quality of family members relationships (mediating variable), and lack of mental health of family members (outcome variable). The variables became operational as follow: The stigma in two dimensions of interaction and gender; the quality of family members' relationships in three dimensions of wife-husband relationships, mother-child relationships, and father-child relationships; and mental health in three dimensions of depression, anxiety of female head of household, and children conduct disorder. The systematic sampling was used and included 222 women head of households supported by the Center for the Protection of Prisoners in Tehran. Based on findings in the range of 1 to 6, the average quality of family members' relationships was 3.6 and it was moderate. The increase in the stigma was accompanied by a reduction in the quality of family members' relationships. Also, the increase in the stigma led to an increase in the level of lack of mental health in the families. Decreasing the quality of family members' relationships was also associated with an increase in lack of mental health status. According to the results of multivariate analysis, 15% of changes in the variance of women's depression were explained with the entry of the quality of wife-husband relationships, and the quality of mother-child relationships, 14% of variations in women's anxiety variable were explained with the entry of quality of mother- child relationships, and the number of people who are supported by the mother, and 23.4% of the variance of children's conduct disorder was explained with entering the quality variables of the father-child relationship, the quality of mother-child relationship and household income per capita.    

Abstract The main goal of this research paper is to study the voting behavior of the youth between 18 to 29 years of age in the city of Mashhad, to describe the characteristics of their networks and to determine how these characteristics affect youths voting behavior. This study attempts to show that not only the voting behavior of network members but also the characteristics of personal networks have effects on youths voting behavior.  To achieve this end, data was collected using the survey method. Thus, 262 structured, face-to-face interviews with young people were conducted. The young were randomly chosen from different districts of the city of Mashhad. The analysis of this study was carried out using the network dataset containing information regarding the respondents and their ego-centered networks, and the tie dataset which included information about network members (1360 ties). Our final analysis is based on the aggregation of these two datasets. The findings show that functional characteristics of respondents’ networks and voting behavior of their network members are significant predictors of youths voting behavior.  In an overall view, the results approve the role and importance of network in describing and appointing the voting behavior.