The Relationship Between Economic-Social Factors and Political Knowledge

Introduction
Political knowledge influences strikes, political elections, political tolerance, political beliefs, and the overall political behavior of individuals (Carpini and Keiter, 1993), but perhaps, as Miller (2001) points out, the most important effect of (political) knowledge is to increase the civic competence of the public for political participation in a democratic government and to prevent extremism, alienation, and the dominance of technocratic attitudes among the elite (Miller, 2001). On the other hand, according to Carpini and Keiter (1997), politically informed citizens are more interested in and participate in political activities. In fact, political knowledge shapes citizens' attitudes towards political activities by defining interests and creating unity in beliefs based on interests (Bramlett, 2013). However, citizens' political knowledge is not equal to each other, and the unequal distribution of political knowledge among citizens is an established fact in the field of political science (Simon, 2017). Most researchers focused on the inequality of political knowledge distribution among individuals on the variables of education, gender, age, and income. Most studies conducted to examine these variables are focused on American and European societies, but Iranian society requires further study due to its different situation, especially the young population, their increasing presence, especially women, in universities and higher education centers, and the growth of the middle class. Accordingly, the research question focuses on the level of general political knowledge, and then we analyze the direction and intensity of the relationship between the contextual variables (gender, education, age, and income) and general political knowledge in Iranian society. The Research MethodThe research data were collected through a survey and questionnaire from citizens aged 18 and above in 22 districts of Tehran using a multi-stage-stratified cluster sampling method in January 2017. Multiple linear regression analysis (multivariate) was used to analyze the data; in such a way that the regression output shows an estimate of the amount of change in general political knowledge (as a dependent variable) with a one-unit change in each of the independent variables including gender, age, education, and income, while all other independent variables are held constant. In such a case, the partial correlation size of each of the independent variables is measured by multivariate linear regression. 
Results
According to the research findings, the political knowledge variable as the dependent variable, the mean and standard deviation of political knowledge are equal to six out of 14 and 3.4 respectively, and on average, respondents answered 43 percent of the questions correctly. Also, 73.2 percent of respondents chose the correct answer to the following question "In 1979, Iran converted to the "Islamic Republic" system through a referendum," while only 18.8 percent of people answered the following question "what was Iran's unemployment rate in 2016?"Based on the output of the SPSS software, the regression coefficient of determination is (R^2=0.322), meaning that 32.2 percent of the variability of the general political knowledge variable can be explained by independent variables including age, education, income, and gender. All independent variables have a significant positive relationship with the general political knowledge variable, the intensity of the relationship of the variables with general political knowledge varies, such that education (0.436), age (0.261), gender (0.208) and income (0.095) have the highest relationship with general political knowledge, respectively. Regarding the gender variable, it should be noted that the gender categories are coded with the numbers zero (female) and one (male), and according to the beta value (0.208), men scored 20.8 percent higher than women in general political knowledge. 
Conclusion
The level of general political knowledge of men is higher than that of women, and the number of options selected by women as "I don't know" is higher than that of men. As a result, it can be said that contrasting structural positions and contrasting responsibilities, resources, constraints and structural pressures resulting from socio-cultural conditions and women's reluctance to guess in answering questions affect the level of political knowledge of both sexes. Also, the education variable has the strongest relationship with the level of political knowledge; This relationship could be due to the motivation, opportunities, and abilities that education provides to the educated, as argued by Carpini and Keeter (1996), which increase their level of political knowledge. Also, the age variable is related to the level of political knowledge of individuals; this relationship could be due to the accumulation of objective experience and information that an individual acquires with increasing age, but with increasing age (age range 58 and above), the level of political knowledge decreases due to the weakening of cognitive ability, as pointed out by Lau and Redlawsk (2008). Finally, although income had a significant relationship with political knowledge, this relationship was less than 0.1; this situation could be due to the greater number of people with higher education in low-income groups.