Cultural, social and educational vulnerability in adolescents and youths

  Introduction: This study was performed to evaluate the rate of cultural, social and educative vulnerability and its related factors among adolescents and youth and to provide the possibility of taking protective measures.   Method: This descriptive-analytic study was performed in year 2009-2010 on adolescent children of a governmental center’s employees. Target population of 1200 cases was selected using multi-stage cluster sampling from Tehran, Qom, Isfahan, Hamadan, Mazandaran, Ardabil, Kermanshah and Khorasan-e-Razavi and finally 1030 people entered the study. Data was collected using a researcher-made questionnaire including 20 sub-scales. Data was analyzed using statistical indices of correlation, independent t-test and variance analysis, by SPSS 14 software.   Results: In terms of general vulnerability 70.4% of cases were protected, 17.4% was categorized as normal population and only 12.2% of cases were vulnerable. Majority of vulnerabilities were in the areas of feminism and equal approach to males and females, free time mismanagement, tendency to pleasure and materialism. Conclusion: using all facilities in order to investigate vulnerability in adolescents and youth, establishing family-council centers, trying to enrich and manage adolescents’ free time, train families in order to have more and better supervision and helping families to have better relationship among family members seems necessary in order to prevent injury.