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Background:Unprecedented growth of fatalities due to traffic accidents in the recent years has raised great concerns and efforts of authorities in order to identify and control the causes of these accidents.Objectives:In the present study, the contribution of psychological, social, demographic, environmental and behavioral factors on traffic accidents was studied for young boys in Tehran, emphasizing the importance of psychosocial factors.Patients and Methods:The design of the present study was quantitative (correlational) in which a sample population including 253 boys from Tehran (Iran) with an age range of 18 to 24 who had been referred to insurance institutions, hospitals, correctional facilities as well as prisons, were selected using stratified cluster sampling during the year 2013.The subjects completed the following questionnaires: demographic, general health, lifestyle, Manchester Driving Behavior Questionnaire (MDBQ), young parenting, and NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). For data analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation coefficient, and inferential statistics including simultaneous regression, stepwise regression, and structural equations modeling were used.Results:The findings indicated that in the psychosocial model of driving behavior (including lapses, mistakes, and intentional violations) and accidents, psychological factors, depression (P < 0.02), personality trait of conscientiousness (P < 0.02), failure schema due to the parenting style of mother (P = 0.001), and perception of police commands (P < 0.002), played an important role in predicting driving behavior. Among social factors, perception of police regulations (P = 0.003), had an important effect on violations and mistakes. Among environmental and behavioral factors, major factors such as driving age (P = 0.001), drug and alcohol use (P = 0.001), having driver’s license (P = 0.013), records of imprisonment or committing a crime (P = 0.012) were also able to predict occurrence of accidents.Conclusions:As the results of this study show, different factors contribute to different driving behaviors and accidents. The broad scope of these factors links accidents to other social issues and damages.

Background: It is believed that smoking is the gateway to use substances and illicit drugs. Due to an increase in smoking among students, we thought there is a need for more efficient ways to prevent smoking among the young and adolescents. Objectives: This study aimed to develop an extended version of the Health Belief Model (HBM) with elements of Health Literacy (HL) to assess whether an educational intervention could be effective in smoking prevention based on this new development in 2016. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study performed on 130 students living in dormitories of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran, who were recruited and assigned to experimental and control groups (each containing 65 students). The experimental group received six electronic educational sessions via telegram application while the control group received no intervention. The data were collected using a questionnaire containing items on HBM, smoking preventive behaviors, and a measure of HL (the HL inventory for adults-HELIA). The questionnaire was completed at three time-points: before, immediately and three months after the intervention. Data analyses were done using analysis of variance, Friedman and Mann-Whitney U Tests. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: Before the intervention, there was no significant difference in the demographic and background variables, the underlying level of knowledge, preventive behaviors, HL, and all the constructs of the model between the groups (P > 0.05). After the intervention, comparing two groups showed that the mean scores of knowledge, preventive behaviors, HL, and all components of the model changed significantly i n t he e xperimental g roup c ompared t o t he c ontrol g roup ( P < 0 . 0 5). T he mean a nd s tandard deviation of adoption of smoking preventive behaviors at the beginning of the study in smoking and non-smoking students in the