Social Representations on Euthanasia between Students of Law and Medicine: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract The practice of euthanasia activates the debate about the scope of therapeutic efforts in limited situations and involves the society in the discussion of values and social beliefs implicated in the management of the person. The objective was to analyze the social representations about euthanasia between students of law and medicine. A free association questionnaire was applied with the inductor term: euthanasia, with 120 university students. The data were separately submitted to a prototypical analysis (IRaMuTeQ Software) and to a multiple correspondence analysis - MCA (R.TeMiS Software). Through the prototypical analysis, some variations were identified in the central core hypothesis, which referred to the possibility of two distinct social representations. Through the MCA, a lexical field was observed, linked to the image of death for the Medicine group and to values and norms for the Law group, with religion as a significant variable in the reorganization of the representational field, being able to accentuate a negative and condemnatory dimension on this practice