Abstract We have chosen to figure out why a majority in a home-help service group in west of Sweden is, or has been sick-listed. The purpose with our work has been to investigate our area to be able to come up with different factors which can have contributed to the high numbers of this particular group. We have worked with qualitative method and conversation-interviews to be able to answer our purpose at the best way. We had separate interviews with the ten employees at their work and these interviews we chose to record with a computer. The result we got were that the group had existed for about four years and since then, they have had several different directors.

Introduction: The current research shows that cannabis use is increasing, while alcohol use is decreasing in many countries. The reason for the increase is considered to be the increased availability and that adolescents attitudes towards cannabis has become more liberal. Aim: This qualitative study aimed to examine adolescents attitudes and knowledge about cannabis. Methods: Data has been collected from Focus group interviews with adolescents aged 15-18 years, in a west Swedish municipality. Participants were recruited through visits to secondary and upper secondary schools.

This Masters thesis is concerned with the complex planning process of setting up a citizen bureau in a public library. The aim is to find out how citizen bureaux are designed and to suggest a simplified model of strategic planning. The planning process is studied from a business perspective in the library context, and this perspective is also used to study citizen bureaux and their written plans elsewhere. A combination of qualitative methods are used: observations, focus group discussions and interviews. Observations in the public library showed a great need for an environmental analysis as well as structure to the planning process.

The purpose of our study is to examine how parents experienced their participation and their involvement in a solution-focused parenting group. The parenting groups are a part of the social welfare system in a town in south of Sweden. The study is conducted as a qualitative study with focus groups. 11 parents have participated. The study´s theoretical framework considers solution focused theory, social constructionism and process within groups.In the study we found that participants generally perceived their participation as positive and that they received confirmation by meeting other parents in the same situation.

The main purpose with this MA thesis is to examine how visually impaired, disabled and people with dyslexia define service quality at the public library of Linköping. The method that has been used is Focus group interviews. A focus group consists of four to eight people who are joined together, without knowing each other before, to discuss a certain subject. The aim is to get a wide spread of answers. A secondary purpose is to examine how this method works.

The essay is about how teenagers around 18 years of age in a small town in Sweden talk about gender, body and sexuality. The study is based on two Focus group interviews with five boys and four girls. We have then thematized and analyzed the material with queer theory.The results show how young people see heterosexuality as something 'natural' and gender as biologically determined. The teenagers are critical towards anything that deviates from the traditional nuclear family consisting of mother, father and children. Norms are created in their speech as some of them acts as so called "border guards" for these norms.

The aim of this study has been to create an understanding for the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers? own children. Our main focus has been the experience this group has of foster care, their experience of participation in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method has been qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study has been Sense of Coherence.Our interviewees gave mainly a positive description of being part of a foster family even though they could give examples of difficult situation and of loss.

The purpose of this study was to find out how special needs users ' autonomy and influence in their daily routines is described by their assistants. What interpretations of the concepts of self-determination and influence on special needs users' daily routines emerge from the assistants statements and what conditions can be seen? To reach a conclusion, focus group as a method was used. The focus group met twice to discuss this topic. The diamond method was used as stimulus material to support the discussion in the focus group.

Aim: The aim of this essay is to study the work of an alcohol company?s (Pernod Ricard) corporate social responsibility and how this work is being communicated to the company?s stakeholders. Furthermore I aim to describe the profile of the specific company, in other words how they wish their stakeholders to experience the company. I will then compare this profile with the image of how the interviewed stakeholders actually perceive the corporate social responsibility activities. Are there any differences?Material/Method: Together with literature and document studies, a qualitative method has been used and four Focus group interviews with a total of 16 stakeholders have been conducted.Main results: The main results from the Focus group interviews showed that the stakeholders appreciated corporate social responsibility work that focuses on the protection of young people.

In this study, religiosity in prison is investigated. What opportunities are there for those detained to practice their religion and how did their religiosity change after they were detained? Six interviews were conducted to gain a better perspective of religiosity in prison. The focus is on Correctional Institution in Kalmar, where surveys have been conducted over a longer period but also the monastery at the Correctional facility in Kumla is discussed. Most interviews were conducted in the prison of Kalmar, in a room where religious conversations are conducted.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

The aim of this study was to seek knowledge about how the media audience interprets media representations of immigrants as well as the construction of ?us? and ?them? that is created from the media report.We implemented two Focus group interviews, one containing only ethnical Swedes and one holding a variety of people with different ethnical backgrounds. The focus groups got to read nine news articles from different Swedish news papers selected by us, based upon previous research. These articles got to serve as the basis of the discussion.To supplement the focus groups, which got to represent the media audience, we also interviewed two different persons we choose to call informants, whom are both immigrants and are or have been politically active and often appear in local media.The interviews were our empirical material which was used for analysis. The method we used was qualitative analysis of meaning and was based upon a hermeneutic starting point, meaning that all humans are interpreting beings.

In this essay we discuss the broad area of website usability from a tourism perspective. Our goal was to investigate the usability in smaller and bigger tourism websites. We have declared what website usability means and the importance of involving the users when designing a user interface. In a pilot study, we conducted three interviews with people who work with usability and then used the information we got to form questions to use in a focus group interview. In this focus group, we asked three people to assess two Swedish tourism websites, one bigger and one smaller, to find out if they were considered usable and if there was any difference in usability depending on the size of the site.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of idea a group of students in third grade, who attends a school in the Stockholm area, have on group work in school and how they think it affects their learning.The study is based on two questions:What opinion do the students have about group work?What opinion do the students have about how group work affects their learning?The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview six different students, where the interviews were both individually and in groups. I started by interviewing students individually and then had a group interview. The idea with the group interview was to end it all with a brief discussion about the thoughts that came up during the individual interviews. I chose a selection of six students, four girls and two boys which they all were at the age of 9 and go to the same school.The socio-cultural and structural perspectives, is those theoretical perspectives that my study is based on.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: My study aims to analyse, using Pierre Bourdieu´s theory, whether the social background plays a significant part in the attitudes and use of Apples mp3-player iPod. The study also aims to determine whether it is possible to group the focus groups used in my study and iPod into Bourdieu´s model.Material/Method: The reference material used in this paper is mainly gathered from books concerning Pierre Bourdieu´s theories. I have also had four focus groups of two different characters, to study their attitudes towards Apples mp3-player iPod. I have then applied the results of the focus groups to Bourdieu´s theories and models concerning habitus, social fields, capital and lifestyles, and studied whether there are any divergences in attitudes between the groups.Main results: My findings are that the focus groups as well as iPod can be put into Bourdieu´s model. According to the responses from the people in the focus groups, the attitude and usage of iPod do not mirror people?s social class or background, which goes against Bourdieu´s? theory.