Pour une prise en compte des représentations sociales dans l'étude de la santé au travail : des pistes pour la prévention

In the field of occupational health, several studies, both empirical and theoretical, emphasize the role of what might be called for now, beliefs, perceptions, or representations of certain relevant factors, such as stress. The theory of social representations provides a theoretical and methodological corpus dedicated to the study of such phenomena referring to everyday thinking and common sense. This contribution, devoted to practitioners and researchers working in the field of occupational health aims at providing a synthesis of recent results emphasizing the inclusion of everyday thinking in the study of the impact of work on health. Then, another aim of this contribution is to present briefly the theory of social representations, and some methods of investigation that can be applied easily in the frameworks of prevention actions and field research. Finally we also propose some perspectives of studies focused on the impact of work on health, perspectives in which social representations could play an important role.