Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract Max Weber attempted to link the German idealist tradition to the positivist approach. His methodology examines human behavior in an interpretative manner. For Weber, the behavior is a purely mechanical bodily movement to the individual and has special meaning to him. Only when the individual's behavior is meaningful, rational, and interpretive is its action. The purpose of this article was to examine Weber's methodology and extract its important characteristics to better understand and analyze social problems. To do this, we used a documentary method. The following characteristics of his methodology emerged from our analysis: social and natural phenomena differ in their methods, believing that phenomena are multi-dimensional, focusing on probability and the relationship between micro and macro levels, paying attention to the importance of qualitative and quantitative methods, creating ideal types, examining the factors and consequences of social problems, and using an interdisciplinary approach.
 

Abstract Scientific associations as an important institution play significant roles in society. Therefore, the study of their functions, structures, and identification of influential factors on strengthening their functions are of significant. The statistical population of this study is all undergraduate students of Ferdowsi University in the academic year of 2018-2019- totally 9977 students. 150 students were selected as the random sampling in this research. Finally, with the use of SPSS and the suitable tests, the data was analyzed. 
 Descriptive results showed that the level of students' social participation in scientific associations was low (40%). Furthermore, social trust, the efficiency of scientific associations, the benefits of association membership and the relationship of the associations with departments as the dependent variables were better. Plus, the inferential analysis demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between the dependent variables and the students' social participation. It is also important to note that the path analysis that the dependent variables, except for association efficiency, explained 20% of the changes in social participation.