NASCIMENTO-SCHULZE, Clélia Maria    CAMARGO, Erigido Vizeu. Social psychology, social representation and methods. []. , 8, 3, pp.287-299. ISSN 1413-389X.

The present article aims at contributing to the debate on altemative methods for the study of social representation. First of ali, different options on the study of social representation are described and the qualitative and quantitative methods are differentiated. The discussion, including also social psychology methods, deals with: objectivity, control, interpretation and explanation. In the second part, particular attention is given to the usage of the textual material as an empirical indicator of social representation, and a distinction between the content analysis and discourse is presented. The appropriateness of each methodological choice must be seen as related to the levei of knowledge the theme studied, to the research goal and finally, to the complexity of the theoretical framework used

: social representation; quantitative method; qualitative method; textual analysis.

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