Luso-Brazilian adolescents' risk representations: contributions for the nursing performance

Abstract

The risk concept has been adopted to subsidize actions in the health field. Applied to adolescents, it has been masked by the adventure spirit, referred to the behaviors that raise the probability of damages or even death. Therefore, what represents a risk in the health field, for many adolescents represents "pure adrenaline". Based in the Social Representations Theory, in this descriptive exploratory study, it was aimed to analyze and compare the risk representations among Luso-Brazilian adolescents and to identify the resources used in order to prevent or minimize such situations. Were informants, eighteen adolescents from one public school of Évora in Portugal and eighteen adolescents from another public school locate in Rio Grande, Brasil. The collection of the data happened between October and November of 2006, through semi-structured recorded and transcribed interviews. Through the content analysis, it was verified that the adolescents associate risk to "danger". However, while the boys focus the assaults and accidents, the girls emphasize the non planed pregnancy. In other words, situations that, partly, differ from the ones included in the preventive programs accomplished by health professionals. Being the family the most mentioned support, it is considered that school and health services need to be allied to the family and to the adolescents, in order to delineate strategies that minimize the risks to the youth from the two countries are exposed.