Agoramétrie's Trunk Questions & Moscovici Social Representation's Core – More than Just Similarities. Issue 1 (October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: van Meter, Karl M.
• Is Part Of: Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique. Volume 136:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 53
• Page End: 65
• Publication Date: 2017-10
• Subjects: Agoramétrie -- Trunk Questions -- Social Representation -- Heart or Kernel -- Moscovici -- Abric; Agormétrie -- Questions souches -- Représentation sociale -- Coeur ou noyau -- Moscovici -- Abric; Sociology -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 301.01
• DOI: 10.1177/0759106317725655
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0759-1063

Abstract

Thirty years of almost annual Agoramétrie surveys of opinions in France on social conflicts have shown the existence of a very stable two-dimensional structure with a "closure" / "openness" axis and a second "emotional" axis. These same results also show the existence of "trunk questions" which systematically appear in these surveys. On the other hand, in social representation, Serge Moscovici and his colleagues have shown through the method of "associated words", among others, that there is a very stable "core" or "nucleus" of social representations that generates and largely determine all the others. In this article, we present these two approaches and their results, and show that the set of "trunk questions" and the "heart" of social representations are more than just similar and perhaps identical.