Social Representations of Bogota - Colombia Inhabitants Regarding a Conditional Cash Transfer Policy

Abstract

The current article shows the development of a research process whose main objective was to explain the influence of the social representations of the inhabitants of Bogotá, Colombia in the implementation of the public policy of conditional cash transfers “Más Familias en Acción.” For this aim, a qualitative study of hermeneutic design was conducted with beneficiaries of the program and non-beneficiaries, in which, through the application of semi-structured interviews, the most frequent social representations about subsidies, policies, work, education, health, among other relevant issues related to this public policy were identified and once the information was coded by using the Atlas.ti software, interpretation of results was done making possible to establish a relationship between the social representations found and the implementation of “Más Familias en Acción,” leading to the understanding of how social representations as sets of ideas, values and practices that become a social code that denominates the individual and collective reality, have influence both in the way in which the beneficiaries of the program conceive their social reality, and in the sense they give to the program, as well as in their articulation and interaction with it, enabling its implementation, which may or may not occur according to the objectives of public policy.