The construction of scientific knowledge in Food and Nutrition: Analysis of dissertations and theses in the Brazilian post-graduation programs in Nutrition

• Autor(a) principal: de Assis Guedes de VASCONCELOS, Francisco
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista de Nutrição
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.puc-campinas.edu.br/nutricao/article/view/8187
• topic: Education, higher; Knowledge; Nutritional Sciences; Ensino superior; Conhecimento; Ciências da Nutrição

ObjectiveTo analyze dissertations and theses produced by graduate programs in nutrition in Brazil from 2003 to 2012. We sought to identify: a) The number of studies produced per year b) the scientific approach (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed), and c) the area of knowledge in the scientific field of nutrition. MethodsThis is a descriptive study. We investigated seven graduate programs linked to the area of nutrition of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, which had the web pages listing the studies. The analysis procedures included reading the titles, identifying the advisor’s lines of research, reading the summaries, and reading the methods section. ResultsIn the study period 758 dissertations and 204 theses were defended, signifying an increase of 229.0% for the all programs. The hegemony of the quantitative approach shows the influence of the philosophical trends linked to positivism and the biological sciences, attracting interest from 92.5% of researchers. The qualitative and mixed approaches contributed only to 7.3% of the studies, expressing the influence of the social sciences and humanities and of the philosophical trends’ dialectics and phenomenology about a small group of researchers. ConclusionThe distribution of dissertations and theses in the six areas of knowledge reaffirms the complexity, breadth, epistemological, and methodological heterogeneity; and the configuration of the field of knowledge production in food and nutrition, requiring the construction of collective political projects, seeking the interdisciplinarity of the different areas that structure the field.