The aim was to examine writing ability and some of its underlyingfunctions in adults with intellectual or communicative disabilities at dailyactivity centres by comparisons with children and adults without disabilities.66 adults with intellectual or communicative disabilities, 39 children and 14adults without disabilities were included. The following tests/tasks wereexecuted: Test for Reception of Grammar-2, graphomotor task, nonwordrepetition, Rapid Automatized Naming and Writing elicited by pictures. Thepicture elicited narratives were examined regarding length, spelling,syntactic complexity, interpunctuation, content and general impression. Theresults demonstrated that adults at daily activity centres performed lowerscores than adults without disabilities. The group generally didn?t differ fromthe children, but they made a smaller proportion of phonologicallyacceptable misspellings and achieved lower scores on nonword repetitionand Rapid Automatized Naming, which could indicate limitations inphonological processing ability.

The aim of this study was to describe the meaning of individual care according to Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment programs (NIDCAP) to the early born child. The care around the early born child has shown a big importance. NIDCAP incorporates many care aspects that give structure for an individual tailored care. A fast care planning within three days and night after the birth according to NIDCAP has a positive effect for the cognitive development. The early child has showed that the surroundings environment has an important role for their development.

In our study we examined recurrent patterns and changes in the representation ofhomosexual persons in Swedish daily newspapers 1987, 1997 and 2007.We analysed articles about HIV-infected persons and articles with a view to portray thelife conditions of gay and lesbian persons from the three different years. We chose toonly analyze news articles that intend to represent real human beings, which mean thatwe did not analyze reports that only reproduce abstract knowledge from authorities.With analytical tools from semiotics and discourse analysis we identified some recurrentpatterns in the representation of homosexual people. We found that a recurrent pattern inthat when homosexual people are seen as groups, they are described as deviant,discriminated and some times as a threat. When portrayed as individuals the nonanonymouspersons appear in articles and pictures as normal, strong and healthy. Lesbianwomen are not represented in the articles from 1987, but in articles from 1997 and 2007they appear as unhappy when single and happy in a relationship.The results also showed some interesting differences in news representation ofhomosexual persons between the three investigated years.

This thesis is a discourse theory analysis of two feminist anthologies - Det heter feminism! and F- ordet.  By analyzing these texts through the three categories feminism & feminists, gender equality & equality and sex/gender & sexuality I have raised questions about the feminist debate in Sweden in the 21st century.The discourse theory?s ideas of descriptions of reality and fixation of meaning lies as a foundation for this thesis. The concepts of social constructionism, post structuralism and essentialism/anti essentialism are central for the analysis as well as concepts connected to the three previously mentioned categories.The intention of this thesis is to describe and analyze a fraction of the Swedish feminist debate in the 21st century and discuss its meaning in a societal context. A number of conclusions were reached in the final discussion.

This thesis aims at investigating the two municipality?s Gislaved and Ljungby. Where the aim is to see if there is any connections, between the type and the degree of public-private partnerships, and the municipalities obtained environment performance. In this essay the starting point is that the environmental performance in the chosen municipalities is good.Interviews among local politicians and representatives for the municipalities plastic industries, has functioned as a way to test the hypothesis. Gislaved and Ljungby have thereafter been compared, in order to see if there is any similarity in the sort and the degree of public-private partnerships, and how that will affect the environmental performance. The overall questions in this essay are:How can the cooperation among the chosen municipalities and the      local business life be described? What kind of Public-private partnership      exists in the selected municipalities?Is there any difference between the municipalities, referring to      the degree of cooperation between the municipalities and the local      business life? Does the degree of cooperation affect the progress on the environmental      performance? The end result shows that the local business life doesn?t have any impact on the environmental performance.

The aim of this study was to explore transsexuals? identity formation and experiences related to cross-sex hormone treatment, as well as to become absorbed in the narrative approach. To be able to participate in transsexuals? identity formation, life stories were well suited as a theoretical approach. Life stories can be seen as socially situated actions according to Mishler, where individuals? identity formation can be seen as both identity performances and identity claims.

Suicidology deals a lot with taking into consideration significant symptoms, risk factors and establishing causal relationships which inevitably are very important for suicide prevention. But do we understand the suicide attempters better thereby? The aim with the study is to elucidate the meaning of the lived suicidal experience that is expressed by participants on an Internet forum. Ten participants' texts which concerned own suicidality were chosen out from this Internet forum and were analyzed and interpreted on the basis of a phenomenological hermeneutical method inspired by Ricoeur (1976). The result established twelve themes that with the aid of Heidegger (1993) and Derrida (1978, 1991) led to that the following conclusions could be drawn about the meaning of the suicidal lifeworld: suicidal concern and care in itself reduces the sense of identity, practical suicidal doing in itself reduces the world, sense of identity is more affected by the future than the present and the past, the death is escaped from through a calculating determination to have the death at one's disposal, inability to turn away from the death increases oscillating between states of emotions, the surrounding world's requirement to avoiding death becomes to a compulsion to isolate one self; and finally: to both feel anxiety in front of one self's own death and dread when escaping from it..

Encounters between students and religious believers is common in the subject of Religious Education in Swedish schools. For pedagogical reasons teachers arranging these encounters hoping that exciting things will happen. But which qualities and experiences arise out of these encounters?In this study representatives of eight different religious communities are interviewed who regularly receive pupils coming to their respective communities. The proposed theoretical framework is related to Phenomenology and Hermeneutics and the methodological approach is interpretive.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can limit patients physical abilities and contribute to social isolation. The purpose of this literature study is to investigate men's and women's experiences of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary dis-ease, and the supporting and guiding role of the nurse to an increased quality of life. 13 critical reviewed articles were used to find the answers to our questions. Quality rating forms were used in order to guarantee a good scientific quality. The results show that, it is of great importance for the COPD-patients well-being to experience social support from those around them, and to have a close relation-ship with their families and friends, in order to experience quality of life.

The main aim of my research essay is to examine two congregations, one in Sweden and one in Democratic Republic of Congo, how theology and the life in the church shape the cultural context. The analysis uses semi-structured interviews of two pastors responsible for organizing the Easter celebration in their churches. The interviews serve the purpose to reveal how they apply theology in their context, how they interpret the Easter celebration liturgically in relation to the early church and how they perceive the cultural development in the congregations Easter celebration 2010-11. To give complementary insights to the interviews I use computer-aided interviews with members of the congregations. The methodological approach is based on a study of contextual theological theories, Easter traditions in the early church, Easter theologies and then applying these theories in the interviews.

The purpose of the thesis is to map the meaning of ?international competence? in Swedish company boards of directors. The study is divided in a qualitative part and a quantitative part. The qualitative study consists of a discourse analysis where variation in interpretative repertoires are identified to enhance the understanding of the nature of reasoning related to the meaning and importance of the issue at stake. The discourse analysis is conducted on an empirical material from 27 interviews with decision makers in recruitment processes to Swedish company boards of directors.

The aim of this study was to highlight homelessness through the perspective of formerly homeless men and women. The research questions focused on the informants experiences of the process into and out of the homeless situation and how their experiences could contribute to the knowledge about the social problem of homelessness. Besides the theoretical perspective of narrative and life course research, Fuchs Ebaugh exit theory and Honneth confirmation theory were used as theoretical guidelines.The empirical material consists of five life stories obtained through indepth interviews. The results of the study indicate that alcohol and drug use was of importance for the process towards homelessness. External factors as the change in the organization of the housing market in the 1990´s may also had an impact on the lifes of the informants.

The conception of exhaustion was first used in the end of 1960 and was then used in a psychological context directed towards the working life. Eventually was the conception devided into two main categories: mental and somatic symtoms. Today research of exhaustion is mainly aiming towards recovering and returning to working life.This work sets out to analyse the importance and effects of social networks such as family, friends and professional relations in helping people who suffer from exhaustion to recover. The study is based on interviews with eith people who have suffered from exhaustion but today are recovered. To my aid I have used tree different questions: What part have the social network of family and friends ment to the recovery? What part has the professional relationships with doctors, therapists and curators ment to the recovery? How have you changed your life in order to maintain balance?The interviews pointed out the importance of the social relationships as support, feedback and understanding that the process takes time.

In todays competitive business climate the concept of ?quality management? is a significant part of daily work for many companies, as they want to achieve high performance quality and delivery success. Within the services sector third-party logistics companies play an increasingly central role when it comes to the goods that are being transported. These companies are presented with continuous challenges to ensure that goods are loaded on trucks efficiently and delivered on time, at the right place and in the right condition. The present case study was conducted in collaboration with Schenker AB and Schenker Åkeri in Jönköping, to help these two company branches serving under the same major corporation to solve a common problem they both encounter, namely the fact that it regularly occurs handling abnormalities in the terminal process that affects overall quality for customers.The study aims to find out how the daily quality control concerning the handling of goods in the terminal process can be improved hopefully resulting in a higher quality in cargo shipments.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how the public library communicates with young users through the library web sites. Four Swedish public library web pages for children are analysed. In the analysis the web pages are treated as a combination of semiotic resources that, communicating as a whole, hold a meaning potential. In order to identify the underlying meaning of the whole I have applied the tools of Kress' & van Leeuwen's visual social semiotics to the chosen web pages.The information value, the framing and the salience of each composition is examined and analysed, as is the size of frame, the perspective and the vertical angle of a selection of images from each web page. The results of the semiotic analysis are then discussed and related to Jochumsen et al:s four space-model and the notion of ?child perspective? and ?empowerment?.The results show that the child perspective is strongest on the web pages that represent the performative space as dominating and that empowerment is mainly represented as ?doing?, ?participating? and the ?free choice?.