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

The practice of euthanasia activates the debate about the scope of therapeutic eff orts 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 identifi ed in the central core hypothesis, which referred to the possibility of two distinct social representations. Through the MCA, a lexical fi eld 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 signifi cant variable in the reorganization of the representational fi eld, being able to accentuate a negative and condemnatory dimension on this practice.