Investigating the Influential Factors in Improving the Quality of Life for Working Children (Case Study: City of Shiraz)
Subject Areas : Regional PlanningShirin Heidari 1 , Ahmad Torkaman 2 *
1 - MA student of architecture, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran.
2 - Assistant Professor and faculty member, Department of architecture, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran
Keywords: Quality of life, Shiraz, Poverty, child labor,
Abstract :
As a salient predicament witnessed in many cities today, child labor incurs detrimental effects on many societies, equally embroiling developed and developing countries, which results in widespread poverty and class differences. Neglecting various dimensions of life quality due to the rapid growth of urban areas has brought about adverse consequences influencing the individuals' and societies' health and peace. Studies show that child laborers are deprived of favorable quality of life and they are usually exposed and vulnerable to various social harms including sexual abuse, drug addiction and peddling as well as many other physical and mental harms. Considering the importance of growing and nurturing conditions for this group of children, it seems necessary to conduct a research on the quality of life for child laborers. In general, the purpose of this study is to identify working children's conditions, assess their needs, and introduce the effective factors in improving their life quality in the order of priority. A descriptive-analytical method is employed in this study and the statistical population is comprised of the working children in the city of Shiraz. Data were collected using library and field approaches and the correlation analysis method was employed to analyze the information. A review of the research literature as well as the inferential statistics and the results of Friedman, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, and Chi-square tests show that elements such as income, job, accessing to housing and food, security, education, healthcare services, relationships, and sanitation are among the most important factors in improving the quality of life for working children.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
As a noteworthy problem facing most major cities in the contemporary world, child labor has significant economic and social negative aspects. This particularly prevents skills, education, and knowledge from growing; reduces productivity and social insurance revenues; increases life and financial losses; causes various kinds of social harms including sexual abuse, addiction, and drug retail as well as other delinquencies among children and adults; raises the rate of migration to provincial capitals, and escalates poverty and class distance in society; hence, it endangers the social, economic and cultural health of the society and hinders its progress and development. Studies show that poverty is the main cause of child labor. In other words, families' financial distress is the most important impetus and poverty plays a decisive role in current and future status of children.
The booming urbanization in recent decades and failing to dedicate appropriate attention to the quality of human life has brought adverse consequences on the level of individual and social health of society and urban life. The quality of life has been considered as one of the most essential research lines in recent decades encompassing a wide variety of elements from nutrition and clothing to healthcare, social and physical environment. It also relies on subjective or qualitative indicators (environmental, social, health, physical and mental items) as well as objective or quantitative indicators (quality items of the urban environment). Effective indicators of quality of life include physical factors (enjoying health, energy and physical strength); Mental health factors (self-esteem, well-being, security and mental health); Spiritual factors (understanding the purpose and meaning of life); Social factors (employment, health services, education, interacting with others, etc.); and Physical factors (housing, natural resources, physical environment).
Methodology
The present study draws on a hybrid approach. A descriptive-analytical research method has been used to provide appropriate answers to research questions. The research method employed is quantitative in terms of nature, applied in terms of purpose, and non-experimental in terms of data collection.
In order to achieve the main research objective, which is to identify and determine the effective factors in improving the quality of life for working children, the documentary (review and note-taking of documents, statistics and tables) as well as field (questionnaire) method was used to collect data. As for data analysis, the correlation analysis method was used and Friedman, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Chi-square tests were exploited. The analysis was performed using SPSS software version 2.3. The quality of life is considered as the dependent variable and the independent variable includes physical-mental, psychological, spiritual, social and physical indicators.
Using correlation analysis and questionnaire, all components resulted from the study of theoretical foundations were tested to be categorized based on importance. The statistical population includes working children in Shiraz, which was estimated to be about 30,000 according to the statistics. The sample size obtained using Morgan table and Cochran statistical formula to be 379 children.
Results and Discussion
The factors affecting the quality of life for child laborers were identified and studied after examining the theoretical foundations. To determine the importance of each factor, a customized questionnaire has been devised and used, which includes 14 measurable items each assigned to one single factor. In addition, the 5-point Likert scale was used with the answers being ranked from 1 to 5 and the number 2.9975 was selected as the average of the answers.
The validity and reliability of the questionnaire is of a formal type and has been confirmed by experts' views. Cronbach's alpha obtained after several stages of items modification has reached the desired and acceptable number of 0.710; thus, the reliability of the questionnaire is proven. In order to determine the statistical test to be presented, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical tests were first used to examine the normality of the research data and the hypothesis of data abnormality for the research variable is confirmed. Therefore, the use of non-parametric tests, such as Friedman, for the variable under study was allowed.
Considering the number obtained for the significance level which is less than 0.01, it can be concluded that the Friedman means difference test is significant for the research variable.
The results show that the element of employment and earning income is the most important factor for working children. Subsequently, the elements of accessing housing, food and security are the next significant factors affecting the quality of life for working children. Factors such as natural resources and understanding the purpose and meaning of life have the least impact on the quality of life according to child laborers.
Conclusion
A number of fourteen elements namely employment and income, housing, food, security, education and training, healthcare services, social interactions, sanitation, mental health, energy and physical strength, physical environment, self-esteem, natural resources, and understand the meaning and purpose of life were identified to play a key role in determining life quality for this group, among which only employment and income, housing, food, security, and education and training earned a higher-than-average score according to the results (the average was considered to be 2.9975). In line with the conducted study, the following suggestions and solutions are provided as useful guidelines to be utilized by the scholars and authorities for any future research or probable actions:
- Designing special spaces for education and skill training (urban and regional scale - large scale)
- Architectural design of spaces for working children based on criteria and standards (architectural scale - medium scale)
- Designing the interior spaces intended for labor children with respect to components of child psychology (interior design scale - micro scale)
- Financial and legal support by relevant organizations (Imam Khomeini Relief Committee), Welfare Organization and other related institutions)
- Comprehensive social support by relevant organizations (conditional and unconditional cash or non-cash donations, public employment plans, developing special programs to protect children's health, especially children with disabilities and ...)
- Fostering public behaviors, cultures and earnest interventions against economic exploitation of labor children.
Abrishami, S. (2016). Designing a children's home for working children under 7 years old in District 12 of Tehran with the approach of creating a sense of place (Case study: House of Knowledge in Darvazeh Ghar). The 2nd International Congress on Community Empowerment in the Field of Sociology, Educational Sciences, and Social and Cultural Studies. [In Persian]
Biagia, B.; Gabriela Ladub, M. and Meleddub, M., 2018, Urban Quality of Life and Capabilities: An Experimental Study, Ecological Economics, No.150, PP. 137-152.
Cai, Tommaso; Verze, Paolo and Johansen, Truls E. Bjerklund,2021, The Quality of Life Definition: Where Are We Going?, Uro Jornal. NO. 1, P-P.14–22; doi:10.3390/uro101000
Crockerl, Thomas F.; Brown1, Lesley; Clegg, Andrew; Farley, Katherine; Franklin, Matthew; Simpkins, Samantha and Young, John, 2019, Quality of life is substantially worse for communitydwelling older people living with frailty: systematic review and meta-analysis, Quality of Life Research, No. 28, PP. 2041-2056, (doi:10.1007/s11136-019-02149-1)
Das, D. (2018) Urban Quality of Life: A case study of Guwahati, Journal Social Indicators Research, Vol88, No2, pp.297-310.
Davarinejad Moghaddam, M. (2021). An analysis of quality of life indicators in urban spaces (Case study: District 2 of Mashhad metropolis). The 5th International Conference on Civil Engineering, Structure, and Earthquake. [In Persian]
Dissart, J & Deller, S., (2000), “Quality of life in the planning literature”, Journal of Planning Literature, Vol.15, No.1, PP 135-161.
Estoque, Ronald C.; Togawa, Takuya; Ooba, Makoto; Gomi, Kei; Nakamura, Shogo; Hijioka, Yasuaki and Kameyama, Yasuko, 2019, A review of quality of life (QOL) assessments and indicators: Towards a “QOL-Climate” assessment framework. Ambio, No. 48, PP. 619-638, (doi: 10.1007/s13280-018-1090-3)
Fayers, P M & Machin, D., 2000, Quality of Life Assessment, Analysis and Interpretation, New york: Jhon Willy
Frisch, M.B., 2006, Quality of life therapy: A life satisfaction approach to positive psychology and cognitive therapy. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons
Ghadarjani, R. & Malek Hosseini, A. (2015). Review of the concept of quality of life and identifying its indicators. The 2nd National Conference on Architecture and Sustainable Urban Landscape. [In Persian]
Ghadiri, M., Hekmatnia, H. & Seyfollahi, M. (2021). Analysis of quality of life indicators in urban neighborhoods (Case study: Koohbanan city). Human Geography Research, 53(2). [In Persian]
Ghanei, M., Esmailpoor, N., & Saraei, M. H. (2017). Evaluating quality of life in neighborhoods in order to improve quality of life (case study: Ghale neighborhood, Bafgh). , 8(28), 21-44. [In Persian]. https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.22285229.1396.8.28.2.4
Ghasemi, A. (2017). Optimal design of residential complexes with an approach to improving quality of life (Master’s thesis, Islamic Azad University of Shahroud, supervised by Dr. Ahmad Jamei). [In Persian]
Ghodsizad, N. (2015). Determining design principles of elderly care homes with the approach of improving elderly quality of life: Case study of Tabriz (Master’s thesis, University of Guilan, supervised by Dr. Amir Reza Karimi Azari). [In Persian]
Gholi Motlagh, M. and Darvishi, F. (2021). Urban Quality of Life Survey by Localizing Eurobarometer Indexes (Case Study: the City of Qazvin). Human Geography Research, 53(2), 579-597. [In Persian].doi: 10.22059/jhgr.2020.289797.1008013
Ghorbani, M. & Khezai, F. (2017). Designing a care center for working children with a place attachment approach. The 5th Scientific-Research Conference on New Horizons in Geography, Planning, Architecture and Urban Planning of Iran. [In Persian]
Greco Giulia, Skordis-Worrall Jolene, Mkandawire Bryan, Mills Anne (2019). What Is a Good Life? Selecting Capabilities to Assess Women's Quality of Life in Rural Malawi, Social Science & Medicine 130 69-78.
Hajidehabadi, M. A. & Shishegaran, M. (2018). A victimological review of working children. Legal-Scientific Journal of Ghanon Yar, 2(8). [In Persian]
Holgado, D. et al. (2016), Two Profiles of Child Labor in the Colombian Caribbean Coast: Children Relocated to Suburban Areas Compared to the Key Role of Social and Labor Characteristics of Mothers in Urban Settings, In Indicators of Quality Of Life In Latin America (PP.251-273). Springer, Cham.
Imanzadeh, A. and Alipour, S. (2019). Lived Experience of Loneliness by Tabriz’s labor Children: A Phenomenological Study. Quarterly of Social Studies and Research in Iran, 8(2), 279-304. [In Persian]. doi: 10.22059/jisr.2019.268727.770
Jangjoo, F., Nasiri, H. & Jami, J. (2015). A review of the support of working children in the Iranian legal system with a view to international documents. Work and Economy Journal, (181). [In Persian]
Mandegar, S. (2017). A legal review of the situation of working, street, peddler, and orphaned children. Journal of Political Science, Law and Jurisprudence Studies, 2(2). [In Persian]
Moghaddas Jafari, M. H., Veysinejad, N. M. & Dorosti, A. A. (2013). Investigation of factors affecting the emergence and expansion of working children (Case study: Ahvaz city). Journal of Social Sciences, (22), 55–72. [In Persian]
Park, JE & Park, K., 2002, Parks textbook of preventive and social medicine, 17th Ed, India: Banarsidas Bhanot
Roșu, L.; Corodescu, E. and Blăgeanu, A., 2015, Does geographical location matter? Assessing spatial patterns in perceived quality of life in European cities. Eur. J. Geogr, Vol. 6, No. 2, PP. 15-34.
Safarzadeh, J. (2018). Working Children. Tehran: Pars Ketab. [In Persian]
Salari Sardari, F., Heydari Moghaddam, M., Nobakht Sobhani, A. & Arefi, A. (2014). Investigating the components of quality of life in urban space (Case study: Lamerd city). Biannual Journal of Urban Landscape Studies, 1(2). [In Persian]
Shaterian, M. , Heidary Sorshjani, R. and Falahat, F. (2020). Evaluation of quality of life indexes with approach healthy city (Case study: worn tissue of Kashan city). Journal of Urban Social Geography, 7(1), 65-80. [In Persian].doi: 10.22103/JUSG.2020.2005
Simbar, S., Hosseinkhanzadeh, A. A., & Abolghasemi, A. (2019). Hope for the future, attachment relationships, and emotional-behavioral problems in child labor. Quarterly Journal of Child Mental Health, 6(3), 51–65. [In Persian]. https://doi.org/10.29252/jcmh.6.3.6
Taghvai Nakhjiri, A. & Barkhordar, B. (2018). Designing a care center for working children with the approach of enhancing social interactions. The 2nd Conference on Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Development in the Horizon of 2025. [In Persian]
Uzzell, (2006), “Environment and quality of life”, journal of Revue eureenne de psychologie appliqué, Vol.56, PP 4-1.
Zarghami, S., Kozehgar Kaleji, L. & Rahimi, A. (2021). Analysis of the factors affecting quality of life in underprivileged urban neighborhoods: Case study of Jafarabad and Dolatabad in Kermanshah. Journal of Urban Structure and Function Studies, 8(27). [In Persian]. doi: 10.22080/usfs.2021.17658.1898