COSTA, E. C. Animais de estimação: uma abordagem psicossociológica da concepção dos idosos [Pets: a psycho-sociological approach of the elderly conception]. 195 p. Master’s Dissertation – Centro de Ciências da Saúde. Universidade Estadual do Ceará. Fortaleza (CE). 2006.
Available on: <http://uece.br/cmasp/dmdocuments/edmarachaves_2006.pdf>
This research is dedicated to the study of elderly conceptions about pets from a psychosociological perspective. In this context, the purposes of the search were to apprehend the social representations of elderly people about the sociability with pets, their representation about risk and benefits of this close association and the sociocognitive processes that reflect feelings, conceptions and attitudes of the elderly about pets. It’s a qualitative search and its theoretical approach was the Social Representation Theory and the use of the multimethods. Its investigation field was SESC, an elderly people sociability center. The people who took part in the research were two hundred women aged 60 years-old or more. First, the Test of Free Association of Words was used with 200 subjects (100 that live together with pets and 100 that don’t live together with them). The inductor stimuli were: (1) pets, (2) risks of the close association with pets, (3) benefits of the close association with pets, (4) health, (5) disease, (6) old age, and (7) “self”. In association with the test, a sociademographic profile questionnaire was made. Subsequently, it was applied the interview technique with 20 women who live together pets using the question: “what pets represents to you?” It used the Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure to complement the qualitative data collection. The evoked words in the Test of Free Association were processed in the Tri-DeuxMots software and submitted to the Factorial Correspondence Analyze. The sociademographic questionnaire data were processed in the SPSS statistical package and organized in tables and figures. The interviews and Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure narratives were analyzed by the content analysis technique (categorical kind). The apprehended representations were organized in five categories: when loneliness became unveiled, benefits of the close association with pets, pet anthropomorphization; and pet loss. It was observed, with the multi-method techniques, that the benefits of pet close association are exalted and the risks are kept silent and refused. They’re lonely women who need social support and anchor their illness in words like discouragement and pain. In this context, a social role is given to pets, they’re a source of affective comfort, but not the cure to emotional problems.