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“Konkoor Giant”, a narrative of high school female students from Gorgan, Iran

  • Sahar Arab , Tayebe Ziaei , Nasser Behnampour and Elham Khoori EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 1, 2017

Abstract

Background

The university entrance exam or Konkoor is a determining event for the Iranian adolescents and their families. It is considered as the most important opportunity for adolescents for creating their ideal futures. Hence, regarding the importance of this exam and its accompanying pressures during the critical and stressful adolescence period, this study describes adolescents’ perspective about what make them worried about the university entrance exam.

Methods

This study is based on responses of 500 high school female students to an open-ended question completed in their class. In total 482 adolescents wrote down their answers. Using quantitative content analysis, these statements were analyzed.

Results

The findings showed that three categories including “individual” category (87.90%) with three subcategories; Konkoor’s outcome, readiness for Konkoor, self-blame, and “family” category (7.12%) with three subcategories; consequences of failure, family expectations, family conflicts, and “religious- socioeconomic” category (4.98%) with three subcategories; religion, financial status, educational policies as the main adolescents concern sources about the university entrance exam.

Conclusion

Considering the high concerns of female adolescents about the university entrance exam and the pressures that they receive from their families, society, and even themselves, modifying the educational policies, applying some measures to promote knowledge, and gaining required skills to deal with different aspects of such concerns are necessary for adolescents and their parents.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded and supported by Gorgan University of Medical Sciences in Gorgan, Iran, grant no IR.Goums.1394.343.

  1. Conflict of interest statement: None.

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Received: 2017-04-05
Accepted: 2017-05-26
Published Online: 2017-08-01

©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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