Associative Network Method

The associative network method is a technique for studying social representations of a phenomenon. Although it is little known and used, it can be widely used in nursing research, particularly to understand the representations of a population on a disease or a professional practice.

This article aims to describe the associative network method, proposed by De Rosa in 1995, through a concrete example.

The associative network is a technique that allows us to identify the content, structure, and polarity of social representations of a phenomenon. It was used with 41 participants to describe their representations of urinary incontinence. First, the data were collected following the four steps described by De Rosa. The analysis was then carried out manually and using Microsoft Excel. The different themes evoked by the 41 participants, the number of words in each theme, the rank of appearance of the themes, the indices of polarity and neutrality, and the rank of hierarchy were thus analyzed.

We were able to describe in depth the representations of caregivers and people from the general population on urinary incontinence and, more specifically, their content and structure. The spontaneous answers of the participants allowed us to explore several dimensions of their representations. We were also able to obtain rich information, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

The associative network-which is easy to understand and implement-is a method that can be adapted to various studies.