João Wachelke

Critérios de Construção e Relato da Análise Prototípica para Representações Sociais

Prototypical analysis is a largely diffused convention of presentation to characterize the structure of a social representation based on free association data. However, occasionaly the results of that analysis do not contain the essential information to guarantee its transparency. The present text aims at systematizing and indicating some of the information that should be present in the description of prototypical analysis results, briefly discussing the pros and cons of some analysis options. For that purpose, a brief introduction of the analysis is made, then moving on to technical considerations and closing the text with an example of an report.

Italian students' social representation on aging: an exploratory study of a representational system

In various countries there are studies aimed at characterizing social representations on aging, but little is known about their relations with other representations. The present study proposes to characterize those relations through the notion of representational systems. An exploratory survey has been conducted with 151 Italian undergraduate students. They have completed evocation tasks about seven social objects linked to aging and also rated the distances among them. Distance ratings went through similarity analysis, while a prototypical analysis was carried out for aging and three objects: death, health and family. The results indicate possible content connections among representation elements and suggest a conjunction relationship between aging and family. The notion of representational systems opens possibilities for more refined representational characterizations.

Representações sociais sobre política segundo posicionamento político na campanha eleitoral de 2006

The present study aimed at describing Brazilian political space during 2006 presidential and state elections. The organizing principles from political positioning groups’ representations on politics were investigated. A total of 1051 participants answered to a questionnaire that was available on the internet, which contained items about electoral participation and political positioning and wrote up to 7 words or expressions inducted by the word politics. Correspondence analyses were carried out, comparing the representations of participants without political positions or aligned with left-wing, right-wing and center positions. Two factors were retained. The first organizing principle opposed effective politics to corrupt and broken politics. The second organizing principle consisted of the classical opposition between left-wing and right-wing. Results illustrate the determination of representations’ anchoring by political positions and indicate the possibility of conceiving the political space as a representational field.

Influência do recrutamento de participantes em sítios temáticos e comunidades virtuais nos resultados de medidas psicológicas aplicadas pela Internet

Data of psychological measures, obtained after opt-in recruitment through Internet sites, were compared to those from the administration of print questionnaires. In the first study, 545 participants from online communities completed the Factorial Scale of Satisfaction in Couple Relationship, the Rusbult Scale of Relationship Satisfaction and the reduced version of the Psychological Well-Being Scales. In the second study, 1,197 participants of websites about soccer answered the Soccer Supporter Team Identification Scale and the Soccer Supporter Fanatism Scale. Factorial structure and reliability results are similar in both versions. However, in the second study, there were differences due to a bias in the sample, pointing out the opt-in strategies limitations.

Make (?) Not War! Are the Social Representations of Peace and War Antonyms?

Two main conceptions, parallel to the two main paradigms on health (i.e., as the absence of sickness or as active well-being), describe the relationship between peace and war. Negative conceptions look at peace as the absence of war, that is, as the absence of widespread acts of direct and intense violence. In their narrow perspective, negative approaches allow unfairness and even violence if they are necessary for the stability and order of the society; an example may be the use of violence to sedate riots. Positive approaches, instead, conceive peace as the everyday effort to construct and maintain civil cohabitation. In this second perspective, peace is dynamic and includes the constructive management of conflict. Positive approaches foster a more extensive conception of peace, from developing interpersonal positive relationships, to collective actions aimed at contrasting those elements of structural violence (from sexism to unequal opportunities) that characterize our democracies (Christie, Wagner & Winter, 2001; Galtung, 1996). These two conceptions have been translated also at an applied level, namely, in ‘peace education’, which has been defined by Harris (2004, p. 6) as ‘teachers teaching about peace: what it is, why it does not exist and how to achieve it. This includes teaching about the challenges of achieving peace, developing non-violent skills and promoting peaceful attitudes.’

Effect of the size of the sample in the analysis of evocations for social representations

The prototypical analysis of evocations is one of the main techniques that allows the exploration of the structure of social representations from verbal data. The present study aims to evaluate the effect of variations in the size of the sample in the configurations of the results of the prototypic analysis from free evocations. Subsampleswere randomly selected from a database with 469 participants with progressively smaller sample sizes (200, 100, 50 and 25 cases), and compared the results settings of the first quadrants with respect to the reference sample. The results show that the samples of 200 and 100 cases have patterns close to the total sample in terms of agreement with the composition of the first quadrant. In addition, samples with 50 and 25 participants are not recommended because they have high variability and low coincidence with the larger sample.

Qualitative questionnaire for the identification of cognems (Qualiquic): an exploratory technique to identify social representation contents and relations

While the investigation of social representation contents through the analysis of word associations is convenient, it does not directly inform about the nature of relationships that representation elements maintain with the social object. This paper presents a qualitative technique, Qualiquic, that is easy and simple to administer. Qualiquic has the advantage of gathering representation contents characterized by their relationships with the representation object, based on a simplified list of descriptive, practical, and evaluative connectors of the basic cognitive schemes model. The underlying theoretical principles are explained, and empirical guidelines are provided, as well as an empirical example of use.

Social representations on politics according to political positioning in the 2006 electoral campaign

The present study aimed at describing Brazilian political space during 2006 presidential and state elections. The organizing principles from political positioning groups’ representations on politics were investigated. A total of 1051 participants answered to a questionnaire that was available on the internet, which contained items about electoral participation and political positioning and wrote up to 7 words or expressions inducted by the word politics. Correspondence analyses were carried out, comparing the representations of participants without political positions or aligned with left-wing, right-wing and center positions. Two factors were retained. The first organizing principle opposed effective politics to corrupt and broken politics. The second organizing principle consisted of the classical opposition between left-wing and right-wing. Results illustrate the determination of representations’ anchoring by political positions and indicate the possibility of conceiving the political space as a representational field.

Representaciones sociales sobre política según la posición política en la campaña electoral de 2006

The present study aimed at describing Brazilian political space during 2006 presidential and state elections. The organizing principles from political positioning groups’ representations on politics were investigated. A total of 1051 participants answered to a questionnaire that was available on the internet, which contained items about electoral participation and political positioning and wrote up to 7 words or expressions inducted by the word politics. Correspondence analyses were carried out, comparing the representations of participants without political positions or aligned with left-wing, right-wing and center positions. Two factors were retained. The first organizing principle opposed effective politics to corrupt and broken politics. The second organizing principle consisted of the classical opposition between left-wing and right-wing. Results illustrate the determination of representations’ anchoring by political positions and indicate the possibility of conceiving the political space as a representational field.