Entrepreneurship and innovation: A comparative analysis of social representations among nursing students

Représentations sociales de la maladie : comparaison entre savoirs « experts » et savoirs « profanes »

Collaboration on children at risk is essential, but our knowledge about inter-professional collaboration between social workers and educators is limited. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to describe French and Swedish teachers' social representation of social workers; and (2) to compare these social representations. The French sample group is composed of 77 secondary school teachers (of students from 11 to 18 years old), and the Swedish sample group is composed of 94. The method used was a ‘free association task’, commonly used to access the semantic content of social representation. Two different social representations of social workers were revealed, one for the French and one for the Swedish teachers. The French representation is characterised by highly positive aspects such as support, listening and competence. Swedish teachers' social representation of social workers is completely different: negative associations were common (44%), and among these, professional secrecy and law and regulations dominated. One plausible explanation is the difference of French and Swedish teachers' roles regarding collaboration with social workers.

Objectives The objective of the present study was to identify the structure and content of the Social Representation (SR) of health professionals regarding elderly subjects with mental health disorders and compare the latter to the lay Social Representation identified in the literature. Method The structure and content of the SR of health professionals was examined in 790 careproviders from the ‘Grand Est’ region of France through the use of the free and hierarchical associations methodology of Abric and Vergés. A prototypical and categorical analysis as well as a similarity analysis and factorial correspondence analysis were applied to the results. Results Analysis of the collated data revealed that the items ‘chronic’, ‘dependent’, ‘behavior disorders’, ‘memory disorders’, ‘solitude’ and ‘social isolation’ were the characteristic components of the central core of the social representation. Discussion Only the peripheral elements were more sensitive to the field of practice of each profession. These findings thus highlight that the SR of health professionals is substantially identical to that of the all-comer SR on several dimensions.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze the social representations and perceived causality of workplace aggression by means of a comparison between bullied (n = 152) and non-bullied (n = 155) workers within the private banking sector in Istanbul, Türkiye. Design/methodology/approach Based on free association tasks, this study uses data gathered from bank workers in Istanbul to use Vergès method, which regards the frequency of recurrence of a word or expression and its rank of appearance. Findings The study reveals the differences in the social representations between bullied and non-bullied workers. Whereas non-bullied employees represent aggression as an organizational issue, bullied workers concentrate on specific aggressive acts. While bullied individuals link workplace aggression to personal traits, non-bullied workers attribute it to contextual and organizational variables. Originality/value This study, being the inaugural investigation of workplace bullying via the lens of social representation theory, contributes a new perspective to the area. These findings provide novel insights on social representations within the workplace bullying conception.

Objective of the study was to identify the structure and content of the social representations of higher education of students from families with different socio-economic status. Background. The higher education is the most important area of human life. It’s connected not only with the wellbeing and social success, but also with the social inequality. The family’s socio-economic status is one of the factors of such inequality in access to the higher education. The social representations of higher education’ specificity studying is a resource for understanding the differences in the assessment of its value, goals and results by students from families with different socio-economic status. Study design. The research is based on the structural approach of the theory of social representations. Three steps were carried out: (a) the students families’ socio-economic status was determined; (b) the structure of social representations of higher education of students from families of each status category was revealed; (c) students evaluated the significance and valence of the structure of social representations’ elements. Participants. The total sample size was 332 students (average age of 21.7): of which 112 were secondary school students (average age of 16.6), 105 were undergraduate students (average age of 20) and 115 were master students (average age of 28.3). Measurements. The methodology of P. Vergès for the analysis the social representations was used. Respondents were asked to evaluate associations in accordance with their perceived significance and emotional attitude (valence). The questionnaire was used to determine the respondents’ socio-economic status. Results. The structure of social representations of higher education of students from families with different socio-economic status was identified and described. The differences in the content of social representations of higher education were found. Conclusions. The cores of social representations of higher education differ according to the number of elements and in their content characteristics for students from families with different socio-economic status. It’s revealed differences in the significance and emotional rating of representations’ core elements

Good citizenship includes fair competitive strategies. Dishonest competitive behaviour – such as fraud – can reflect the absence of one main characteristic of good citizenship as mindfulness of laws and social rules. This article investigates the social representation of competition and fraud with two samples of students from business schools in France and in Hungary. Two complementary studies were carried out with P. Vergès’ associative method and C. Flament and M. L. Rouquette’s tools. The purpose of the first study (NFrench=104, NHungarian=107) was to characterize the central core of the respondents’ representation of both competition and fraud. On the basis of different cultural, historical and economic backgrounds, it was expected that the concepts of fraud and competition would overlap more extensively among Hungarian students than among French students. Results from the first study suggest only slight differences regarding the content of the representations; moreover, in both samples the representations of competition and fraud lacked significant overlap. Hungarian representations of competition and fraud are characterized by a lower level of coherence. Furthermore, academic cheating is mentioned more frequently by Hungarian students than by French students. Following the methodological guidelines of social representations, in order to confirm the results of the first study, a second investigation was carried out (NFrench=115, NHungarian=127) with an alternative associative method. These results confirmed the first study in terms of the content of the social representations and differences regarding coherence. Finally, in the case of Hungarian students a higher prevalence of reference to academic cheating, and links between fraud and competition were found. Hungarians’ competitive result orientation, linked social representations of competition and fraud via a higher prevalence of academic cheating; this refers to the weaker inclination of Hungarians in terms of rule keeping behaviours. which is one of the hallmarks of a good citizen. In fact, our results indicate that, Hungarian students do not seem to consider academic cheating as problematic as French students do.

“If I say sustainable diet”: What are French consumers’ social representations?

La crisis economica actual ha sido un fenomeno nuevo e inesperado; es parte del sistema capitalista, bancario y economico que ha sido conocido hasta el ano 2008. La crisis ha llevado a los bancos, los Estados, las instituciones internacionales, asi como a las personas del comun, a ver profundos cambios en sus representaciones sobre la economia. En este escenario, se plantea la pregunta: ?como los hombres y las mujeres de estratos sociales diferentes afrontan el fenomeno complejo y desconocido de la crisis economica? ?El genero y el estatus social justifican diferentes significados atribuidos a la crisis, sus causas y consecuencias? En el presente articulo se elige la teoria de las representaciones sociales para estudiar el papel del genero y el nivel educativo en la produccion de las representaciones de la crisis. Se presentan resultados de encuestas realizadas en el sur de Italia (N = 120), los cuales revelan que tanto el genero como el nivel educativo de las personas marcan diferencias en la forma de definir y afrontar la crisis. Por un lado, los participantes de alto nivel definen la crisis en terminos mas abstractos que los participantes de bajo nivel. Por otra parte, los hombres de alto nivel mantienen un estado de coping mas proactivo con la crisis que los otros participantes, especialmente mujeres. La discusion se enfoca en el papel de la teoria de la representacion social entendiendo la relacion entre genero, estatus y comportamiento economico, aportando ideas sobre como la igualdad de genero puede ser mejorada.

The aim of this study was to explore the COVID-19 pandemic social representation in the early stages of its development. Following a free association task and a categorical analysis, a corpus of COVID-19-related editorial illustrations from articles posted by leading French newspapers was collected. Iconographic analysis of editorial illustrations revealed 12 iconic patterns that seemed typical of the pandemic iconography. Findings suggest that articles eliciting the greatest engagement (i.e. reactions, comments, and shares) are those that use a stable iconography so that the topic can easily be identified by most Facebook users. Therefore, these images could play an important role in the objectification process development of the COVID-19 social representation. Future studies should therefore explore the impact of the relationship between the news media and their audiences on the visual representation of highly topical issues, in the light of the objectification process of social representation theory.

The main aim of this study was to examine how people think about problem gambling, i.e., persistent gambling despite its negative effects, through the social representations (SRs) that they share about this issue. SRs are organized collections of beliefs, opinions, and knowledge that members of a social group have in common, and past research highlighted them as significant predictors of people’s behavior, and therefore valuable for public health interventions. We investigated the content of the social representation (SR) of problem gambling in a sample of Romanians and we also aimed to examine the variations in this representation according to individuals’ involvement in gambling, and the relations between these variations and life satisfaction. Sex differences were also assessed. We approached the SR content using the free association technique with the inductive stimulus “individual with problem gambling” on a convenience sample of Romanians (N = 313). Results of the comparative statistical analyses indicate significant differences in the core of this SR between groups with different positions on the variables considered. They suggest several elements of social stigmatization of people struggling with problem gambling within the SRs shared by certain groups, specifically by individuals with no gambling involvement (mostly female) and by those with low life satisfaction. Our findings indicate that the SR of individuals with gambling involvement (mostly male) is as focused on the psychological dynamics that attract and keep one’s involvement in gambling, but also on its risks, including that of social exclusion. Finally, our findings indicate that individuals with high life satisfaction share a more empathic perspective on the struggles confronted by people with problem gambling.

Social representation theory studies social knowledge created by groups which becomes objectified, as if it existed outside of social processes. In this paper, some new themes and directions for social representation research are discussed. Overall, it is suggested that more emphasis be placed back onto the group dynamics which create, change and maintain social representations. Too much emphasis, perhaps, has been put on finding and describing the objectified knowledges rather than the social processes which sustain them. In particular, more needs to be known about the groups themselves which create and maintain social representations, and the conditions for such groups' existence. The methods for research need to reflect the social processes over time and anthropological methods of research might help in this regard. It is then argued both that social relations are a prerequisite for social representations and that social representations can be utilized by groups for various functions. Both these points emphasize that social representations exist through, and are maintained by, group dynamics, which need to be studied in addition to descriptions of the content of social representations.

To learn about the structure of nursing students' social representations about obstetric violence. Qualitative study conducted with 117 nursing students from a state university in Brazil, between July and October 2022. Data were collected in person using the free Word evocation technique and processed using the Evoc software to create a four-box chart, through prototypical analysis. The representational structure was organized on the central elements of disrespect, suffering and violation, which attribute to the representation negative meanings related to the group's position on the grievance and its repercussions. The similarity analysis showed that the elements with the greatest connection were disrespect and suffering. Social representations of nursing students were organized around an attitudinal dimension through the terms disrespect and violation, and the affective dimension defined by suffering. It is noteworthy that, for students, obstetric violence is centered on disrespectful professional practices that cause suffering to women.

This Master Thesis presents a study concerning the understanding about "experimentation" of 275 teachers of undergraduate courses on Chemistry initial teacher education of 89 different Brazilian universities, located in 26 States. This study aims to investigate the Social Representations (SR) on "experimentation" of these Chemistry teachers that are participants, or not, of PIBID-Chemistry subprojects. We adopted the SR Theory structural approach, which allows the recognition of a Central Core (CC) that confers meaning to the representation. To gather the information, we employed a questionnaire with 13 questions, of which four refer to the technique of free association of words to the inductor term "experimentation", while the others aim at the characterization of the research subjects. For the analysis of this information and determination of the social representations' CC of these groups, we used the Prototypic Analysis proposed by Vergs and the Similitude Analysis. Subsequently, propositions of content analysis, accordingly to Bardin's approach, allowed the assignment of meaning to the CC terms of these SR. The results show different SR for the two groups. The term constituent of the SR' CC concerning "experimentation" means investigation for the supervisors of the PIBID program. In the case of the non-supervisors of this program, the term that constitutes the CC of the RS is laboratory. The perception of both groups about "experimentation" focused, in large part, on educational aspects, for the training of the future Chemistry teachers. However, while the PIBID supervisors tend to relate the development of experimental activities to the school context, taking into account the particularities and problems of this space, non-supervisors tend to think about the development of experimental activities in the context of Higher Education and research development. It was possible to conclude that the participation on the PIBID project has contributed to the PIBID supervisor' SR resignification of "experimentation", which implies in the modification of their conceptions about the formation of teachers. This result should reflect on the undergraduate students formation to become teachers, whether they are PIBID participants or not.

EPA-1316 - New insights on studying of social representations towards illness

To identify the social representations by nurses about professional autonomy in the care of patients with wounds and analyze their interfaces with the constant incorporation of technologies in this care. This is a qualitative research, outlined from the Theory and method of social representations in its procedural approach and performed with 31 nurses. The interviews were submitted to thematic content analysis software NVivo instrumentalized by 10. The representational content on autonomy is linked mainly to the level of knowledge, power of decision, vocational training and institutional factors. The subjects are positioned favorably to the incorporation of care technologies in professional practice, which involves elements such as cost-effective structure, training, and other resources. It is concluded that autonomy is configured as a prerequisite for the full use of technology and technology is configured as a facilitator for nurses to become more autonomous.