Notebooks on health and work: diaries of public university professors

The main objective of this article is to present and analyze the research instrument called "health and work notebooks", focusing on the production of knowledge concerning professors' work at a public university. The notebooks serve as a qualitative and participant research technique that is appropriate for the in-depth study of relations between health and work, viewing workplaces as privileged spaces for exercising effective action in the defense of health and the work experience as the principal material for analysis. The notebooks' special quality as a research technique lies in worker's role as protagonist in the research, as the diary's author and co-participant in the study. Eight professors participated, all from the same institute in a federal university (IFES) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As for analysis of the empirical materials from the notebooks and consistent with the workers, the thematic analysis technique was adopted, producing four main discussion categories: time on the job and professors' multiple work activities; pre-carization of working conditions at universities; faculty health at limits; and the notebooks viewed from the authors' perspective. As for the results, the theme that stood out was work overload and time pressure to meet targets. Finally, the health and work notebooks proved to be a potential research tool for generating knowledge from a collective perspective.