Small scale internal consumer tests provide a company with a cheap way to get valuable information regarding their products advantages and flaws. Therefore the demand for possibilities to do this kind of test has increased. This report is part of a new sensory project at Unilever. It presents a method for sensory comparison of the company?s own products with the corresponding competitor products.

The purpose of the study is to describe how financial management functions within the individual and family care services in three mid-sized municipalities.27 interviews with managers and key personnel at three management levels in Örebro, Växjö and Jönkö-ping were conducted using a descriptive approach and qualitative method. In addition governing docu-ments and delineations in regards to these municipalities have been studied.The combined findings show that all municipalities have separate visions and control systems/models for their municipality with focus on management by objectives and politically determined goals, which in-clude economical measurements and requirements for the departments. Moreover, are also tracking sys-tems, which are described as following up on the results thru indicators and/or measurable goals. The municipalities utilize framework financials and budget processing on a high level and its timings appears similar in each municipality.Additionally the study has shown that there is a desire and aspiration to implement central economic goals in all three municipalities. The interviewees describe how they use their leadership to anchor, follow up and create participation in economic objectives and results thru instrumental and institutional leadership.

The aim of this study was to illuminate critical factors that facilitate respectively obstruct the novice nurse's development during her first year in the profession. The method used was a systematic literature review according to Goodman's model. The 8 qualitative scientific articles were scrutinized by using a form developed by Pedersen and Sigling (2002). The result shows that cognitive factors, stress, social factors as well as affective factors are critical during the novice nurse's first professional year. The results are related to Antonovsky's concept sense of coherence..

The DuPont formula is one of the most well known and basic tools used for financial statement analysis and is highly useful for understanding firms strategies and operating environment. Previous studies on American listed companies have also shown that analysis of the changes in the DuPont components is useful in forecasting contexts. In this thesis we test whether disaggregating the change in return on net operating assets provides incremental information about future performance for Swedish listed and not listed companies. We find that the change in asset turnover is a leading indicator of increased profitability for both listed and private companies, regardless of size. We also find evidence that the usefulness of the disaggregation for understanding future performance is greater in capital intense industries and lesser in service industries..

A multivariate cross-sectional model is used in this thesis to proxy for expected earnings and to estimate return on equity for 214 companies over the period 2009-2013, using Swedish data. The model, which has never been tested on Swedish data before, is first confirmed to function as a forecasting model for expected return. Furthermore, the model is evaluated through a comparison with two univariate models based on the assumption that return on equity follows a mean reversion process. Forecast accuracy is calculated as the difference of estimated returns and actual returns. The results show that the univariate models' forecasts are superior to the multivariate model's..

This is a study of how emotional engagement can be measured and be taken into account in the development of websites. We believe that emotions become relevant only when viewed in correlation to how users experiencing a webpage. In this study, we developed a tool for use together with user tests where the information about the user's emotional engagement can add new value to the evaluation. The tool allows the user to mark, on the website, his/her emotions and level of engagement represented by colored circles, generating quantiative data on how users feel about the website. The tool is part of a method for evaluating the emotional engagement that we have developed which consists of user testing supported by the tool and accompanied by interviews..

Fältförsök gjordes 2010 på tre olika platser i Sverige. För att utröna ifall man kan minska infektionsrisken av gråmögel i jordgubbar (Fragaria x ananasa), orsakad av Botrytis cinerea, genom att använda ett prognos program som beslutsunderlag för när man ska göra bekämpning. Idag sker kontroll av B. cinerea i huvudsak genom kemisk bekämpning som utförs efter ett rutinprogram. Användandet av en prognosmodell innebär att man bara sprutar när klimatet är gynnande för B.

The Swedish Transport Agency has for a long time collected data on a monthly basis for different variables that are used to make predictions, short projections as well as longer projections. They have used SAS for producing statistical models in air transport. The model with the largest value of coefficient of determination is the method that has been used for a long time. The Swedish Transport Agency felt it was time for an evaluation of their models and methods of how projections is estimated, they would also explore the possibilities to use different, completely new models for forecasting air travel. This Bachelor thesis examines how the Holt-Winters method does compare with SARIMA, error terms such as RMSE, MAPE, R2, AIC and BIC  will be compared between the methods. The results which have been produced showing that there may be a risk that the Holt-Winters models adepts a bit too well in a few variables in which Holt-Winters method has been adapted.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka reliabiliteten i en metod för att observera affektuttryck, Stålforsmetoden. Stålforsmetoden fokuserar primärt på affektuttryck i ansiktet, och mer specifikt den första affekten som en patient uttrycker under en psykoterapisession (?överföringsaffekt?). Den teoretiska grunden är affektteori som utvecklats av Silvan Tomkins och Paul Ekman. Data har samlats in med strukturerad observation och analyseras kvantitativt.

Gymnastics is a reoccurring event in the physical education of many students. Despite this, there is still today limited research which describes the students? perspective and interest for this activity and if there are any differences between genders. The purpose of this study has therefore been to investigate students? interest for gymnastics and if there are any experiences, which can affect this interest.

The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

This survey is a case study with the purpose to find out the teacher´s perceptions about students´ motivation to mathematics. Further this study aims for the teacher´s vision on how they consider students´ motivation in mathematics in secondary school. To collect research data I have used semi structured interviews with four secondary school teachers. The result constructs according to categories that depict the purpose of the study. These categories define students? motivation like achieving different goals, students? basic knowledge, abilities and perceptions of mathematics and external factors that affect students? motivation.

The aim of this study was to investigate which situations haemodialysis patients consider as the hardest for avoiding fluid intake. The data collection was performed with a questionnaire which was distributed to haemodialysis patients who fulfilled the inclusioncriteria. Of 158 haemodialysis patients 103 haemodialysis patients chose to participate in the study. The participants were chosen from different dialysis centres (n=12) in north and south of sweden, excluding the middle of Sweden. The questionnaire that was given out consisted of 32 situations, the response format included nine alternatives, that included different kind of difficultes.

The subject of this study is factors that contribute to immigrants wellbeing in their new country. Our purpose was to describe and examine different factors that according to eight immigrants have contributed to their wellbeing in Sweden. Our main question was: Which factors have, according to our respondents, contributed to their wellbeing in Sweden.To achieve this, we have conducted qualitative interviews with eight different individuals. We also collected current documents and research related to the subject matter. We chose three different theoretical perspectives: Antonovsky´s Sense of coherence, Maslow´s Hierarchy of needs and Mischel´s CAPS-theory (cognitive-affective personality system) as models for the explanation of our analysis.The result of our survey was that we could detach six different categories which the respondents expressed had contributed to their wellbeing.

This essay discusses and evaluates the international currency market in regards to efficiency. To prove the theory that, the difference between expected and actual exchange rates is explained by the difference in expected and actual interest rates and the difference in expected and actual inflation between countries, a model was developed. This model was inspired by the paper of Sebastian Edwards (1982), and is based on three theories; UIP, IS/LM and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The model uses 16 regressions estimated from three pairs of curriencies: $/SEK, £/SEK and ?/SEK.