Psicologia: teoria e prática
Print version ISSN 1516-3687
Abstract
DUTRA, Letícia Rocha and SANT'ANNA, Paulo Afrânio. The social representations about occupational therapy by students and graduates. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.1, pp.79-93. ISSN 1516-3687. https://doi.org/10.5935/1980-6906/psicologia.v19n1p79-93.
This study aims at identifying the social representations by students and graduates in the Occupation Therapy program at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) about their profession. It also aims to identify different stages of establishing such representations throughout the training process, performance and construction of the professional identity. Students and graduates participated in the study (n = 100), which was divided into three subgroups (initial, final and graduates). A questionnaire was used for data collection which was then subsequently processed by EVOC2005 and CHIC® software. The results showed that among the words that make up the core, only autonomous and independent exhibited high representation in the three subgroups. This binomial stands out throughout the following data analysis, as observed in the hierarchical tree. We conclude that students and graduates who represent the profession prioritize professional action (doing), which may be related to the difficulty in defining and creating a professional identity.
Keywords : social representation; occupational therapy; identity; psychology; training.