Social Control

Introduction: Academic transgression (AT), as any behavior, belief, or condition that violates a social and academic norm, is a serious problem threatening academic integrity, especially when committed by faculty members, who are supposed to be educational role models. Societies employ social control means to respond to, prevent or reduce transgressive acts, to maintain social order and morality. The current study aimed to examine the perceived effects of self-control, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction, as social control means, on five types of interpersonal, educational, research, organizational, and sexual ATs among faculty members, and also to measure perceived prevalence of these transgressions in Iranian higher education. Material & Methods: A modified version of “perceived causal relations” methodology was adopted to study the perceived relations between reciprocal pairs of the variables. Network analysis was employed to analyze the data gathered from faculty members via an online questionnaire. Results: The results demonstrated that faculty member participants perceived high effects of their self-control, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction on decreasing ATs, particularly interpersonal, organizational, and educational ATs. Conclusion: As faculty member participants perceived high prevalence of all types of ATs in Iranian academia, there is an urge to consider new policies to employ effective social control means suggested in this research, especially self-control, to reduce, and even restrain the perpetration of these transgressions. We also suggest perceived causal relations as a useful and strong methodology to conduct research on sensitive topics, especially, transgression and crime

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between media literacy and social skills among citizens in Isfahan. To this end, a descriptive-correlation methodology was employed. The population under study consisted of all citizens living in Isfahan who were reported to be 1796967 persons in 2013. Using Cochran formula, 384 persons were selected by stratified sampling and were included in the research sample. The instruments used in the study were Karaman’s and Karatash’s (2009) Standard Media Literacy Questionnaire and Standard Social Skills Questionnaire (Oldmeadow et al., 2013). The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed using content validity and factor analysis. The reliability values of Media Literacy Questionnaire and Social Skills Questionnaire were determined by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and were reported as 0.876 and 0.896, respectively. The results of the study indicated that media literacy with an influence rate of 0.39 affects social skills. Besides, media knowledge (critical thinking) as a component of media literary with an influence rate of 0.37 affects social skills. It was also found that analysis and reaction as a component of media literary with an influence rate of 0.68 affects social skills. The same was the case with judgment and observation of hidden messages as a component of media literary which affects social skills with an influence rate of 0.53. Media literacy with an influence rate of 0.33 was found to affect the expression social skill feelings. Finally, based on the findings of the study concerning the relationship between research variables, some suggestions were offered to improve media literary and social skills of people living in Isfahan.