Theory Of Social Representations And The Aging: A Bibliometric Profile

The aging is a process that can be either positive or negative. When a theme refers to positions or attitudes, social representations may comprehend and explain these phenomena. Objective: With the help of the bibliometrics research, the study focused on describing the scientific publications about social representations of aging, and investigating them. Method: analysis of the available content in the online databases of the Virtual Library in Health, PubMed and Portal Capes, from 2010 to 2015. The keywords social representations and aging were used. By simple descriptive method, frequency and percentage, the following variables were described: authors; authors’ education; maximum qualification of the authors; index H; authors’ institution; journal; year of publication; journal’s impact factor; research’s place; research’s development; research’s objective; the most relevant results; and keywords. For graphical representation of conceptual maps of keywords the software CMap Tools version 5.03 was used and for the analysis of the objectives and the most relevant results the thematic content analysis technique was used. Results: a total of 127 scientific articles were found; after excluding those that were not in accordance with the chosen criteria, 42 files were found. One notices, regarding the authorship of the articles, a decentralization, with more authors from Northeast. The exploratory study and the mixed approach represented the most used research’s method. The publications increased in 2011. Conclusion: The publications denote that the dependence on another person in performing daily activities interferes with the quality of life; they pointed out the social representations and positioning about the theme, important in identifying the weaknesses and vulnerabilities experienced by the elderly.