A Study on the Structural Relationships of Personality Traits and Political Participation among Students with the Mediation of Religious Beliefs

Political participation as one of the major indicators of development is a very important function of people's unique personality-interactive traits, particularly among students. The present research was conducted with the aim of examining the mediatory role of religious beliefs in the relationship between students' personality traits and their political participation. This descriptive-correlational research applied the methodology of structural equation modeling. The population included all the students of Ardakan University in the academic year 2020-2021. 300 students were selected among them by the convenience sampling as the sample. The NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) (short form) (McCrae & Costa, 1992), the questionnaire of political participation (Farajzadeh, 2014), and the questionnaire of religious beliefs (Khodayarifard, 1995) were used for collecting the data. The data analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics and showed that the personality traits of neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness have a significant direct effect on political participation among students (P