Social representation of "the Argentine", "the Spanish", "the Latin American", and "the European" in Argentine university students

This is a descriptive study: The objective is to get a characterization of how Argentine university student represent some national and extra-national groups: "the Argentine", "the Spanish", "the American", an "the European". Nevertheless it is not a simple study about national stereotypes. The originality consist in the methodological approach, based on social representation analysis. The technique used for collecting data was the free association of words. The analysis has three parts. First, there is a count of frequencies of the most extended categories, preserving the textual words. The second part of the analysis uses the statistical technique of multiple correspondences (derived from the factorial analysis), extracting two main factors in each national group. Finally a cluster analysis is applied, grouping the subjects into homogeneous classes. Additionally some associated variables are connected: Identification with the groups, value (positive or negative) of each characteristic, and facility degree to characterize each group.