Exploring the relationship of university students' educational variables and the degree of their use of virtual social networks

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore relationships among the university students' educational variables and their educational variables concerning educational, cultural and social dimensions. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was developed and validated for analyzing the relationship between the amount of time spent for using social networks and different dimensions of educational quality. The sample participants in this study included 400 students who were selected from a total of 3,500 students in Eastern and Western Azerbaijan provinces at north-west of Iran in 2017. Finally, 342 of 400 questionnaires were considered for analyzing. The Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients and multiple regression were used to analyze data. Findings The results proved that the highest correlation coefficient was related to social networks and education quality and the lowest correlation was related to social networks and cultural quality. The result of applying multiple regression proved that there is a linear relationship between the roles of using social networks in predicting students' educational quality. Originality/value The role of academic and general social media in studying students' educational quality at universities is still under researched. This situation provides a significant potential to explore on the effect of academic and general virtual social media in creating educational and cultural awareness among university's students. The findings of the current study add to the existing literature by contributing to a better awareness of university student and applying appropriate strategies to conduct the education of students.