A qualitative comparison study of social and moral values and modernization (attitudes toward innovation) in freshmen and graduate university students

Masome Esmaeily, Somaye Kazemi

Abstract

Universities are faced with the challenging task of educating an increasingly diverse student community with different attitudes and values. So the aim of the study is to analyze and compare freshmen and graduate university students’ attitudes toward innovation and social and moral values. this is a qualitative research. The sample consists of 40 university students of Allame Tabatab’I University, which were chosen by convenience sampling. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted and analyzed and qualitative analyses of data were conducted by grounded theory method. The analysis of the interviews showed that the frequency of social and moral values was higher than the frequency of graduate university students. And also the frequency of tendency to change was higher in graduate university students compared to freshmen. The present findings suggest that university students’ tendency to change and their attitudes toward innovation was related to social and moral values. In other words, as the university students pass the four years of college, their commitment to social and moral values decreases, but they become more flexible to changes and more reluctant to innovation.