Efeito das modalidades de resposta sobre a estrutura o de uma representa o social: o exemplo da representa o dos estudos

A research relating to the social representation of the studies was carried out in order to explore the potential effect of the answers modalities in a calling into question questionnaire. Two questionnaires varying by the number of response and the presence of a midpoint were proposed to 251 young highschool pupils. The results underline the important impact of the answers modalities on the structures obtained. In one case (4 answers) the representation includes three central elements; in the other (5 answers), it contains only one of them. These results confirm those of former research concerning the impact of the midpoint in the calling into question method by reduction of the number of central elements of the representation. This type of research contributes to thinking about the methods used within the framework of the study of the social representations, but also to feed the epistemological stakes subjacent to these methods.