Social representation of obesity: An analysis with students of middle and university education

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze and compare the social representations elaborated by high school and university students about obesity. The study enrolled 200 high school students from public and private schools and 200 university students from João Pessoa, Brazil. The instruments used were a sociodemographic questionnaire analyzed through descriptive statistics performed at SPSS software and a Free Word Association Test with "obesity" as the stimulus, analyzed through prototypic analysis at Iramuteq software. The analysis revealed common elements of the central core of these representations that shows an unifactorial conception regarding the causes of obesity, relating it mainly to poor nutrition and without considering the psychosocial aspects related to the phenomenon, which can lead to blame and prejudice. This study means to stimulate interventions that present accurate information about obesity, to clarify its multifactoriality and to reduce prejudice toward obese people.