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This article analyzes the impact of political sophistication on citizens' political preferences. After defining the concept and measurement of political sophistication, panel survey data from Caxias do Sul and Juiz de Fora in 2002 are used to assess its main determinants in the Brazilian context. Next, the article tests four hypotheses derived from existing scholarship about the effects of political sophistication on individual preferences and information processing. The four hypotheses tested are: 1) more politically sophisticated citizens are more ideologically constrained in their political attitudes then less sophisticated individuals; 2) more sophisticated citizens present more stable attitudes over time than less sophisticated individuals; 3) more sophisticated citizens acquire more political information over time than less sophisticated individuals, and; 4) more sophisticated citizens tend to express opinions more frequently than less sophisticated individuals. The analyses in the paper provide strong support for all four hypotheses. Finally, the article discusses some implications of the results for the study of public opinion and elections in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was based on a study that examined the social representations of health-illness process among workers with work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), users of the Reference Center of Occupational Health (CEREST ) in the city of Juiz de Fora, state of Minas Gerais. Information was collected through semistructured interviews with 12 workers, aged between 29 and 55 years. Data were subjected to thematic analysis. The themes of analysis called "representation of health" and "representation of illness" set that, for these workers, illnesses and labor disability represent a painful gap and the destruction of life projects. Tables of deterioration of living conditions and work degradation, reflected on the health of workers, refer us to sustain that the prevention of health problems that would find a higher degree of resolution would be the replanning of work process' organization and effective performance of public health policies, through symbolic representations of broader health, illness and healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the typical narrative strategies employed by the local TV news teams are directed to their "imagined audience". It interested us to see how the work routines of professionals are deployed to maximize the process of identification between the discursive proposals offered via television and the multiple narratives of Juiz de Fora and region. The crop consisted of empirical analysis of news formats and thematic preferably used by three local TV news today evening hours generated in Juiz de Fora, to set up, on screen, its urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of the doctoral thesis Profile of Community Health Workers in the region of Juiz de Fora, MG, and presents a profile of Community Health Agents (CHA) from the perspective of family health teams, of users and themselves. It discusses the models and experiences on the CHA practiced in Brazil before the initiative of Ceará State, in the 1980's. It contextualizes the movements for the successful reform of the CHA, which characterize a central human resource and strategic for the implementation of health promotion actions, enabling the development of basic community-related actions. It shows that community health agents are a key factor to enable the support, implementation and development of basic community-related actions, to expand them and strengthen them nationwide, but health promotion concerns not only the sector itself nor a single health professional. It is the result of inter-sectoral actions acting in general and quality of life determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]