Abstract

If education is an inalienable right of children and adolescents with a disability, obtaining a job is key to inclusion in adult life. The object of the present study was to analyze the psychological significates held by commercial engineering students about the constructs “adult,” “adult with an intellectual disability,” and “adult with an intellectual disability who works” in the city of Temuco, Chile. This was a transversal, descriptive study, using qualitative methodology with the technique of natural semantic networks in group application. The results show that the word “adult” was defined by men in terms of Responsibility, Work, Maturity, and Money; while women defined it in terms of Maturity, Responsibility, Family, and Work. Both men and women associated the concept of “adult with an intellectual disability” with the concept Discriminated. Men defined it with concepts appropriate to the context, like Discriminated, Support, and Hard-working. Women on the other hand referred more to the aspects of care, such as Discriminated, Vulnerable, and Disabled. Finally, the concept of “adult with an intellectual disability who works” was defined by both sexes with concepts like Effort, Trained, Independent, and Persevering; Effort was the category given the greatest semantic weight by both sexes. It must not be forgotten that the conception that an individual has about disability will be colored to a large degree by his/her socio-cultural capital.