Empirical Approaches to Social Representations

A long-awaited and critical review of a key topic, this book shows how different empirical approaches to the study of social representations are viable and can be complementary. Empirical examples of the analysis of particular social representations - from museums to new technology - are included. The ten chapters in the first half of the book present the key arguments concerning the relationship between the theory and methods. The second half looks at a wide variety of research topics. Of central concern to all the topics are the circumstances under which one can be certain of having described a social representation. The answer lies in the use of multivariate statistical analysis, the use of which is clearly explained.