Acceptance of Rumors

Purpose: Today, using social networking apps has developed a lot. For this reason, the present study was conducted to normalize rumors acceptance questionnaire among the audience of social networking apps. Methodology: The present study was applied in terms of objective and descriptive correlational in terms of correlation type. The research population consisted of active Iranian audiences in Telegram and Instagram during 2019-2020. The sample size was estimated to be n=368, who were selected using the convenience sampling method, respecting the proportion of users of Telegram and Instagram. The data were collected by rumors acceptance questionnaire (Kim & Bock, 2011) and analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and one-sample t-test using SPSS. Findings : The results showed that the rumor acceptance questionnaire had 48 items and five factors of rumor transmission, reasoning, negative emotions, credibility and believing, and the factor loading of all items and their factors were above 0.40. In addition to confirming the construct validity of the tool by the factor analysis, the content validity of the tool according to the opinion of experts and reliability by Cronbach's alpha for the five factors were 0.91, 0.87, 0.83, 0.88 and 0.92; and 0.95 for the tool, respectively. Other results showed that the average acceptance of rumors and its factors were higher than the average except for rumor transmission, which was lower than the average (P<0.05). Conclusion : The rumors acceptance questionnaire among the audience of social networking apps had good validity and reliability. Therefore, the above tool can be used by other researchers to check the acceptance of rumors.

Purpose: The main purpose of this research was to identify the challenges of implementing participatory governance in the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education of the country. Methodology: This study was a mixed research. The statistical population in the qualitative section included the faculty members and experts in the field of public administration, professors familiar with the subject of the research and managers with experience in the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education of the country, who were selected as 12 subjects using the snowball method. The statistical population in the quantitative section also included managers, deputies and experts of the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Sciences of the country. The research tool in the qualitative part was a semi-structured interview, and in the quantitative part, it was a researcher made questionnaire. Theme analysis was used to analyze the information in the qualitative part and the AHP method was used to prioritize the factors. Findings: The results indicated that; infrastructures, bureaucratic factors, environmental obstacles, weakness in policy making, public accountability, communication, joint commitment, trust building, obstacles related to executives and common destiny are the main challenges in the implementation of participatory governance in the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education of the country. Conclusion: A total of 10 main themes and 59 sub-themes were identified.