This thesis examines the effects of proximity operators and query expansion with synonyms on retrieval performance. The queries were expanded with synonyms and structured with proximity operators where the permitted distance between terms varied from 1 to 3. The expansion terms were selected from the online lexical reference system WordNet. Initial query terms were selected from 28 topics that contained compound words and were chosen on the basis of their expandibility. The English morphological analyser ENGTWOL was used for normalization of query terms.

This qualitative study examines the participation that older people have in their own home care by exploring experiences of care workers. We will investigate to see if there are limitations due to financial implications in the sector. Modern day care of the elderly in Sweden is facing increasing pressures to both show cost savings whilst maintaining the same levels of service within the community. It is becoming more essential for older people to participate in their own care for the sake of their health and well-being. The method that we used for data collection was qualitative interviews.

In this thesis, we are concerned with the many different professional roles that a public librarian, working at a small library, has. More specifically, the purpose is to find out which different roles that librarians believe they have, and which view they have upon those. Furthermore, we are exploring the tendencies that librarians discuss in relation to these professional roles. To pursue this goal, we have used the methodology of focus group interviews, with the unconventional twist that our interviews were done using web chats. This may have the advantage that the informants may present more honest views than when using ordinary interviews due to the anonymous character of chatting.

In order for companies to be competetive on the market, there?s a need of capital. If a company is in a need of capital to make major investments and isn?t able to prioritize internal funding, the priority will be external financing with safe securities; loans. How companies should prioritize the allocation between equity and debt, which together form value, leads us to the subject of capital structure.

The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to explore the impact of spare time reading fiction on the identity of teenage boys, and what it really means to them. To investigate this, we have focused our investigation on how teenage boys relate to and what they search for in their reading. The data collection is based on 8 interviews with boys in the age between 14 and 15 and on literature on the subject. The theoretical framework focuses on the reading theories of Joseph A. Appleyard, the transactional theory of Louise M.

This paper is about sensemaking. By using sensemaking we have derived bankruptcy factors from business leaders? own statements about their bankruptcies. The focus in this paper is to ensure how business leaders create meaning about the bankruptcies, which is also our research question.To make the study feasible, we used a method that corresponds well to the purpose of our work. The collection of data started with collecting a number of newspaper articles with direct quotes from business leaders.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The Swedish legislation (Socialtjänstlagen, SoL 5 kap 1§ 6 st.) state that the social welfare committee is particularly responsible for those children whom are in need of support and help after an adoption or custody matter has been decided. "Adoption - but at what price?" SOU 2003:49 is a state report with the purpose to investigate different aspects around international adoptions, which brings up and discusses what supports there is for adoptive families in Sweden. With this background and a special attention towards adoptive children's health conditions when arriving to their new country we decided to study the subject adoption. By interviewing different professionals and volunteers that work with adoptive families in Sweden the aim with this study was to acknowledge how they look upon the support the Swedish community offers for adoptive parents and also how they consider the knowledge about adoption among those who in their line of work can meet adoptive children is.

Concentration of protein in bovine milk is one of the most significant milk quality parameters, to a large extent determining the price for milk to the producer. Mastitis is a common disease among dairy cows, negatively affecting not only milk yield but also milk protein composition. Milk from mastitic cows tends to have lower cheese yield, negatively affected processability properties and sensory quality, due to changed protein quality and composition. Poorer milk protein quality would have an economically negative impact on dairy industry. Only few studies have investigated the short term effects of mastitis on milk protein composition.

The purpose of this essay was to examine female immigrants of South East Asia who have lived together with a drug addict and how they were affected and let themselves be influenced by that, and to study their reactions to such situations.The main questions were:· How do the women describe their personal relationship matters with their husbands with focus on abuse / co-dependency?· How do they show their co-dependency in actions?· How do the women handle their co-dependency?I chose a qualitative method because my purpose was to get a comprehension and hopefully find a pattern in the life situation in this specific target group. Regarding the collection of dataI used both primary data in the frame of interviews with persons connected to the problem, and secondary data in the form of earlier studies in that field.As the main result I found that these women lived in a severe stress. They were affected both psychically and physically by the abuse of their partners. They developed different strategies of survival to stand the reality and to save the family.

Swedish preschools have a variety of children of different ethnic origins. The intention of this thesis is twofold; firstly to deeply examine how preschool teachers work with languages and secondly how to integrate the Swedish language with other native languages in practice. Hence, the aim is to get a deeper understanding and knowledge about how to integrate multilingual children that have other languages than Swedish as their mother tongue. The data collection for this dissertation is based on observations and interviews with three preschool teachers and child minders. The theoretical background is taken from literature which describes the social cultural perspective.

  The study aims to gain a better understanding and explore how a selected group (receivers) perceive two elected advertising images from Indiska and Vila and then compare their opinions to what Indiska and Vila themselves want to communicate. We base the study on theories of encoding / decoding, which deals with how the companies charge their advertising images with values and how recipients decodes these values.A qualitative study was carried out based on analytical induction (planning, collection and analysis). Through the analytical method of induction, we created categories based on the collected data and put them in relation to each other. The result showed that the overall impression of the images' and the context are of great importance for how our respondents perceive the advertising images. The overall impressions convey emotion that reinforces the expression and the message.

The aim of this study was to, from a special educational approach, describe and analyse nine teachers and headmasters experiences and perceptions of the use of laptos, ?1-1?, as a tool for working with 13-16 year old pupils born outside of Sweden and with special educational needs (SEN). Interviews were used for data collection. The interview material was analysed with the phenomenografic analysis method and with meaning condensation method. The result was analysed through three perspectives on special education and the concept of inclusion as the study?s frame of reference.

The aim of this research is to develop a better understanding of how preschool-teachers respond to children in preschool, when they show that they want to have some influence. I have concentrated this study on how the preschool-teachers respond to the children in the gatherings and when the children are playing freely indoors, where the questions at issue are:How do the preschool-teachers respond to the children?s initiative for participation in the gathering and while playing freely?There have been four preschool-teachers and 14 children who have taken part in this study. The children who took part are in the ages of three to five. The study was done at a section in a preschool in middle Sweden.The method used in this study is unstructured observations.

The aim of the study is to examine which present conceptions of sexuality there are in treatment of substance abuse for men. The intention is to examine how staff members in these environments perceive clients? sex and sexuality as well as studying if and in that case how they work with sexuality in treatment. A qualitative method formed the methodological approach and semistructured interviews were carried out for the collection of data. Four staff members from two different treatment institutions for substance abuse were interviewed.