Sound surrounds us in a great extent, we all have experiences of sound and this phenomena has a great meaning in our lives. High levels of sound might be harmful for your hearing and might also cause related difficulties such as tinnitus and sensitivity to sound. Studies reveal a connection between the attitudes toward high levels of sound and the risk behaviours in these situations. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences and meaning of sound and whether the attitudes toward sound will reflect in a family consisting parents and adolescents. A family consisting two parents and two adolescents participated each and one of them in an interview in this qualitative study that has been carried out of a phenomenological approach.

There is a need for examining the accessibility of public web sites and for several reasons. First, public organizations possess considerable amounts information of interest to its citizens and which ought to be easily accessible. Secondly, international and national guidelines for web publishing support the different types of requirements experienced by web users and, in particular, with regard to accessibility for people with disabilities. The thesis examines the design of public web sites from two different aspects. Web sites can be built up and structured from the management view of the public organization, or, they can be constructed with a view to user needs and requirements.

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..

Within system development users have rarely been involved or received much attention during the development. Most of the times, the primary focus within system development lies on insuring functionality, rather than making the system usable. The literature specifies that a non user-centered approach can contribute to a product with low usability, which can lead to an ineffective and unsatisfactory experience for the end users.The purpose of this thesis is to begin an investigation to see if the use of non user-oriented system development methods is a possible cause of low usability in the final system.To achieve the purpose of this thesis, we have conducted a case study. Within the case study we examined the usability of a time reporting system. The case study included seven minor studies; an investigation concerning the development of the system, an expert evaluation of the system, interviews and observations of users, developed paper prototypes and executable prototypes, both which user testing was performed on.The result of this study shows that by working with user-entered methods, the usability in the time reporting system increased after the design had been revised.

This study was based on a quantitative method to examine gender-related attitudes towards leadership styles among employees in trade union organizations in Sweden. The aim of the research was to investigate and understand how gender relates to attitudes regarding leadership within these organizations. The study was based on research questions related to preferences for different leadership styles and the impact of gender on these attitudes. The study incorporated previous research and relevant theoretical frameworks such as leadership theories, gender theories, and theories on prejudice against female leaders to contextualize our findings. Data were collected through a survey using a convenience sampling method, targeting employees of trade union organizations in Sweden.

Public libraries have an important roll of making information accessible to all people. This democratic right supports the cultural development in our society. When public libraries build websites offering information and services it can sometimes cause obstacles for impaired users. It is therefore our purpose to evaluate a selection of websites and library plans to examine how the libraries work with accessibility for these users. This thesis is based on theories of cognitive and human computer interaction, and information architecture.

The blog has become a widely discussed subject, but while marketers do invest in blogs, there is little evidence on the how the blog works as a marketing tool. Therefore, we thought it would be interesting to create a greater understanding of the blog's potential communication effects. To demonstrate the potential of the blog in comparison with more traditional media, we decided to compare the communication effects achieved by a blog with those achieved by an online magazine. We pursued an experiment where we exposed an identical text about a brand to respondents in seven blogs and in seven online papers and measured the resulting communication effects in terms of attitudes and intentions towards the exposed brand. The quantitative study showed that the blog in some basic aspects works as a more traditional media; when the consumer forms positive attitudes toward a text in a blog, the attitude spills over to the attitude toward the brand, with higher buying and w-o-m intentions as a consequence.

The debate in the media on a new Swedish sex education movie sparked our interest in this study. The twenty-eight minutes long movie ?Sex on the map? is the first of it?s kind in twenty-five years. It is also part of a bigger sex educational project that contains, apart from the movie, a book about sex education, a documentary and a teachers guide. The project is a co-production between the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company (UR) and the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU).We were interested in how teachers received information about the project, and what their attitudes were towards it.

This paper investigates how Swedish upper secondary school students relate to the financial support available from the Swedish state of education. It also looks at the attitudes of such students to the new CSN[1]truancy rules as they apply to school politics.Is there a difference in students? attitude to these truancy rules and does that difference depend on the students? socio-economic standard, whether they come from a wealthy background or a marginalised society or whether they are ethnic Swedish? Does this in any way affect the attitudes of the students?This financial support is only paid to those students who do not skip school. If they lose their right to this contribution because of truancy, their parents will also forfeit the right to the financial subsidies to which they may be entitled. Naturally, this may affect students in different ways, depending on what kind of financial situation their family is in.Do some students go to school out of their own financial interest or out of that of their parents? Through focus-group interviews, students have expressed their opinions, told about their experiences and stated their attitudes with regards to these matters.

Library 2.0 is a term which emerged a few years ago and is frequently discussed. There is no uniform definition of the term but the central aspect of the concept is to encourage increased participation from library users.The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate if and if so, how the professional role of the librarian is affected by Library 2.0. To do that, we have conducted a case study at the public library in Umeå. Their homepage minabibliotek.se is a practical example of Library 2.0. The homepage is based on interactivity and the library users can participate in various ways.We thougt that qualitive interviews was the best way to gain an understanding for how the librarians at the public library in Umeå experience how the work with minabibliotek.se affect their professional role.

Internet is the future and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is growing in use. Companies are starting to realise the benefits with VoIP. Skype is the number one soft phone on the market but it doesn't satisfy the needs of companies (e.g. transfer calls, redirects calls and so forth) and leaves therefore a gap. The purpose of this master thesis is to provide Objektor AB (thesis initiator) with tips on how to design a usable soft phone that they know is based on relevant human computer interaction research.The method used in the thesis has been iterative development.

The study presented here is about how to make the special needs user who has a profound intellectual disability and additional disabilities more involved in their implementation plan. Based on a life story interview the study aims at analyzing perceptions of procedures to enhance special needs users? influence. The method used in this study was a qualitative research approach as an overall approach in order to use a narrative method where life history is the method. The focus has been to study a part of an individual life history - a specific domain in the life of the interviewee?s working career.

Objectives. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between the personality variables Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC), Negativ affect and Social inhibition (the D-personality), and health behavior and attitudes toward keep-fit measures.Methods. The participants in this study were 170 embloyees at a regional social insurance office in a midsize town in the south of Sweden. Scales concerning health behavior and attitudes toward keep-fit measures were constructed and the participants completed these scales as well as those of MHLC and D-personality.Results. Participants with strong beliefs that other people, such as doctors or family-members, are responsible for their health, showed a more positive attitude as to keep-fit measures than those with a belief that health is controlled by themselves.

The purpose of this master thesis was to study the librarians?assignment at the public accesses computers, especially howthe librarians perceive what their task is and what their taskshould be.In order to answer these questions a series of ten qualitativeinterviews ?inspired by the phenomenographic approach ?was conducted with librarians who were employed at smallpublic libraries in municipalities with 5 000 - 25 000residents in Sweden.The conclusions in the master thesis were that librarianshave both similarities and differences in how they perceivetheir tasks at the public computers. The most essential taskwas helping the user with information seeking. Thelibrarians also perceived that it should be included in theirduties to help users with the technical/practical issues at thepublic computers. Competence, time and assets were finallythree outlying factors which affected in what extent thelibrarians were able to help the users..

This thesis is an attempt to study computer games and playful computer programs for childrenand youth at Swedish public libraries. The main method used, is qualitative interviews.The main reason the libraries in the study offer computer games and playful computer programsto their users, is that every member of the society shall have opportunity to use newtechnology such as computers and computer programs. The users of this media are for themost part boys. The librarians in our study wish to have pedagogical games and programswithout violent themes at their libraries. Lending computer games and computer programs isnot of any priority for the libraries..