Representational Structure of AIDS for Evangelical Religious Leaders

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to analyze the social representation structure of AIDS for religious leaders of evangelical Pentecostal churches. It is a qualitative and descriptive study based on the structural approach of the Theory of Social Representations, developed with 120 religious leaders. The data were collected through free evocations and analyzed with EVOC software. The terms in the possible central nucleus are sadness, death, and disease. The term sin is an element present in the representational structure of AIDS. It is concluded that the social representation of AIDS for evangelical religious leaders is predominantly negative, similar to that of the emergence of the epidemic.

Keywords

• religion and health
• psychology and religion
• protestants
• acquired immune deficiency syndrome