Social representations of sexual risk practices among youth

Abstract

The present study elaborates on young people’s everyday understanding of risk practices in sexual relationships, using a dialogical approach to the theory of social representations. Those participating were 101 female and male youngsters living in the Basque Country. The results show that the meaning of risk lies in three dimensions: body, situated context and in the social relations. Five meaning system structure these representations: embodied vs. disembodied, fusion vs. separation, , self vs. other, certainty vs. uncertainty, actual vs. ought. Theoretical implications regarding commonsense conceptions of risk and the necessity to apply to contexts of intervention are discussed.