A scientific production diagnosis concerning the third age theme over the period 2001-2006

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting a research whose main purpose was to analyze the scientific production concerning the Physical Education and third age area. The research was developed based on a documental analysis that was carried out virtually, that is, through the internet, and took into consideration 20 national post-graduation courses, three scientific journals and a conceptually recognized research entity. The activities developed included virtual accesses to the electronic pages of each one of the institutions analyzed as well as to the site supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), that way promoting the storage of theses and dissertations abstracts, scientific journals, research lines and projects that presented the key word “Physical Education”, specifically those related to the theme third age, and then submitting all the documents collected to an analysis by means of available tools. As a result of the study, we may infer that the training and physical activity (TAF) theme prevails in the papers related to the third age, as do the positivist paradigm (P), the quantitative method (QT) and the natural and exact sciences (NE). Despite the fact that there is a predominance of “empirical models” in the scientific production related to the third age, the “phenomenological models” have been increasing, something that we believe to be of considerable importance to the scientific production, since it may be considered differently, not restricted to one or another paradigm.