Social Representations - Science topic

If you ask me, i don't know. If i ask chat gpt =

1. Diversity of Societal Groups

• Heterogeneity: Social representations theory places a strong emphasis on capturing the views and meanings held by different societal groups. Therefore, the sample size should be large enough to represent the diversity of these groups (e.g., different socio-economic classes, cultural backgrounds, genders, etc.).

• Subgroup Analysis: Ensure that the sample allows for meaningful subgroup analysis. For instance, you may want sufficient participants from each group to detect significant patterns and variations in their social representations. This suggests a stratified sampling technique where the sample size should be calculated for each stratum separately to ensure valid comparisons.

2. Statistical Power

• Power Analysis: Conduct a power analysis to determine the sample size necessary to detect meaningful effects. Since social representations often involve studying shared beliefs across groups, the sample size should allow for detecting differences between groups or patterns within groups with enough statistical power (typically aiming for 80% power).

• Effect Size Considerations: The theoretical constructs in social representations might involve subtle or diffuse effects. If smaller effect sizes are expected, you will need a larger sample to detect these effects. In contrast, if you expect larger, more robust patterns, the required sample size may be smaller.

3. Capturing Shared Meanings

• Depth vs. Breadth: Quantitative studies often sacrifice some depth for breadth, which can be challenging when studying shared meanings, a core concern of social representations theory. Ensure that your measurement tools (e.g., scales or questionnaires) are capable of capturing the richness of these representations while being suitable for statistical analysis. The sample size should reflect the complexity of the constructs—more complex representations may require larger samples to capture the full range of meanings.

• Multi-Method Approach: Consider complementing your quantitative analysis with qualitative components (e.g., open-ended survey questions) to retain interpretative depth while using a quantitative approach for identifying patterns across groups.

4. Model Complexity and Variables

• Measurement of Multiple Variables: Social representations studies often involve measuring multiple variables, such as beliefs, attitudes, and contextual factors. Larger sample sizes are necessary when the study includes several variables to avoid overfitting statistical models and to ensure robust results.

• Model Type: If using more complex statistical techniques (e.g., structural equation modeling, latent class analysis), larger samples are generally required. The more complex the model, the larger the sample should be to ensure reliable parameter estimates.

5. Pragmatic Considerations

• Feasibility and Resources: Practical constraints such as time, resources, and access to participants will also shape the sample size. You’ll need to balance ideal statistical conditions with what is feasible given your resources, aiming for a size that adequately captures the diversity and complexity of social representations without exceeding your logistical capacity.

6. Cultural and Contextual Sensitivity

• Contextual Specificity: Social representations are often context-specific, so the sample size should ensure representativeness within the specific cultural, social, or geographic context being studied. This might involve oversampling certain groups that are central to the social representation under study.

Conclusion

In sum, determining the appropriate sample size for a quantitative study of social representations involves balancing the need for statistical power, diversity, and depth. Power analysis, consideration of effect size, and the theoretical demands of capturing shared societal meanings are essential, while practical considerations of resources and context should guide final decisions.

hi,

refer this link:

Best wishes..

Caro que aspectos relacionados ao contexto da pandemia e suas derivações deva ter um papel importante nessa discussão

Thank you all Daphnee Michel , S. Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist , Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman , Alexandra V. D. Pierre . I apologize for the delay in reacting and thanking you for your contributions.

Dr Juan Carlos Torrico , thank you for your comment! You argue that population should be part of the process regarding how facing its owns problems in a sustainable way.

Thank you, Dear Sotiris Folinas and Sunny Chi Lik Au

Thank you Professor Evens Emmanuel for your point! You are right! I've read the text on Elsevier, it's an article written by Poortinga et al., . Then, the reference is: Poortinga, W., Whitmarsh, L., Steg, L., Böhm, G., & Fisher, S. (2019). Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis. Global environmental change, 55, 25-35.

Sorry for the confusion. Should I repost the question with the right reference?

Tendrías que ir letanía por letanía y leerlas en sus contextos. Como en todo carnaval tradicional habrá burlas y parodia de la jerarquía social que además siempre es simbólica; pero habría que preguntarse cuánto influye la comercialización de la fiesta (turismo) en la producción de las letanías. Como posible referencia podrías ver qué hay sobre el carnaval de Cádiz y sus comparsas.

Both concepts are rooted in different approaches and are used to analyze/explained a little different issues.. The question is why would you like to combine them? What is the added value? Does it open the new perspectives?

Hello Cody,

Everything I looked at was very old. This is slightly more recent but still 1980:

Then I found this - 2002:

I don't know if these will be of much help; I hope you get further responses to assist your analysis of this important concept.

Very best wishes,

Mary

The discussion of these concepts is extremely broad and started from the foundation of the social sciences. As mentioned earlier, you can find the term social representation in the old school of functionalism, then in the psychoanalytic school and later in Cornelius Castoriadis. More recently, post-structuralism and post-Marxism have also used this term. Since the discourse analysis, it has also been used by Teun van Dijk. In my opinion, human beings share a common framework nourished by society, and that is our social imaginary. The way in which we express this imaginary produces social representations, which are different from each other because social actors tend to interpret their society according to their particular conditions and forms of socialization. In other words, as Pierre Bourdieu said, their habitus.

Modeling human actions to mitigate the effects of drought, floods, or rising sea level, etc., arising from climate change or from other natural or human factors is possible where human reaction indicators are identifiable. E.g. If human reaction x has been proven scientifically as a mitigation measure against environmental factor y, call it rising temperature due to climate change, then x becomes the applicable measure to adopt under similar circumstances.

Prof. Orach-Meza

I haven't compared children's and adult's game behavior, great idea, but I had a student who for his MA thesis compared children's and adult's competences in ranking of social status and knowledge of coalitional alliances ( see: http://gradworks.umi.com/14/84/1484437.html).  It might give you some ideas.  See also the work of Bock  ( e.g.: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-002-1007-4#page-1) for some background in "Embodied Capital Theory" and childhood. 

Hi Soumia,

Substantive representation is my principal topic of concern :)

It's a little different of what you asked, and you probably know, but there is the manifestoproject.wzb.eu

Best regards,

Under my perspective social representations are an instance of social constructionism, the latter meant in a broad sense of epistemological commitment. Social representations as formulated by Moscovici, do draw from the insights of Berger & Luckman and Foucault. They seek to individualize macro-sociological level of ideologies as implemented in individual minds, and relate reasoning, attitudes, and other instances of individual and social cognition to those broader structures. In this respect they embrace both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Some prominent scholars on social representations work extensively in a factor-analytical and experimental methodology, which was crystallized in the 1970's by Doise and others. Others, such as Flament, Codol, work in a highly mathematicized framework, employing graph theory and associative networks in order to capture the social representations. Perhaps these two aspects, quantification and focus on individual cognition (even though the latter is explained in terms of social constructions and social interactions) has caused a number of marxist social constructionists, such as Parker, to accuse social representations of being reductionist on the individual and cognitive level. This criticism is the special topic of the 3(2) issue of Papers in Social Representations. The relation of social representations to social constructionism is also discussed in the special issue 26(2) of The Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior. Nevertheless, keep in mind that the stance taken by Parker is not the only social constructionist perspective on social representations. For example Teun van Dijk, a founder of Critical Discourse Analysis, embeds effortlessly mental models, cognitive functioning and social representations in a critical discourse analytic framework.

Hi Carolina

You could try some of these; 

Gill, R. (2011) ‘Bend it Like Beckham? The Challenges of Reading Gender and Visual Culture’ in P. Reavey (ed) Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research, pp. 29-42. London: Routledge.

Goffman, I. (1979) Gender Advertisements. New York: Macmillan.

Morant, N. (1998) ‘Social Representations of Gender in the Media’, in: Miell, D. and Wetherell, M. (eds) Doing Social Psychology, pp. 234-283. London: Sage.

Moscovici, S. (1998) ‘Social Consciousness and its History’, Culture & Psychology 4(3), 411-429.

Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16 (3): 6-18.

Zarzycka, M. (2012) ‘Madonna’s of Warfare, Angels of Poverty: Cutting through Press Photographs Photographies 5 (1): 71-85.

I have recently finished a study on intergenerational breastfeeding, where participants brought artefacts to interviews, and I am going to do some SR stuff around motherhood but not written up yet. Also, I have a small section in a chapter I am drafting up for a forthcoming book that looks briefly at SR and visual images, get in touch if you would me to send this

best wishes

Dawn

Please connect to the following link

This might help you find an answer to the discursive-side of your question, Abdelmadjid. But it takes a different path from some of the other discussions.

The gist is that Max Weber (1921/1952) did something like this and Harvey Sacks (1999) and Emmanuel Schegloff (1999) examined the methods that Weber used to interrogate a sacred text so to answer a sociological question.

Rod Watson (2009) introduces the Weber-Sacks-Schegloff sequence and briefly describes the textual analysis that was involved on pages 3-4 of his book. This might be a place to start to gauge whether this material might be helpful for your purposes.

Sacks (1999) located Weber’s methods but it is a complex read because it draws on ethnomethodology; and many people are not familiar with it. But you see how a small extract from a single text is produced as a case study that orients to local organisation of text as a practical accomplishment. It will help you find some commonalities between this and your research intentions, and so help to consider whether it is useful.

Weber used the Old Testament to produce a description of Ancient Israel. Sacks (1999) subjected Weber’s reading of the Old Testament text to praxeological examination so to determine Weber’s methods. Schegloff (1999) helps us to see how Sacks worked, discovered, and described the method used to transform Old Testament text into Weber’s formulation of Ancient Israel. So Schegloff is important because he helps us to see some of the taken-for-granted things in Sacks’ paper.

My offering, Abdelmadjid, is that by tracking these things in a retrospective way (i.e., what was Weber’s method?) that you might be able to determine a practical method that is useful for your studies: A prospective way of working. I hope that it helps in some way.

References

Sacks, H. (1999). Max Weber’s ancient Judaism. Theory, Culture, & Society, 16(1), 31-39. doi:10.1177/026327699016001002

Schegloff, E. A. (1999). On Sacks on Weber’s ancient Judaism: Introductory notes and interpretative resources. Theory, Culture, & Society, 16(1), 1-29. doi:10.1177/026327699016001001

Watson, R. (2009). Analysing practical and professional texts. Farnham, England: Ashgate.

Weber, M. (1921/1952). Ancient Judaism. City, State: Publisher.