The aim of this study was to reach a better understanding of voluntary work and its possible influence on the work role. Based on a phenomenological approach, five voluntary workers from the leisure field were interviewed. The interpretation of the empirical data was based on the Humanistic psychology and its theories about personality, self-realization, motivation and emotion. The results show that the motive behind the voluntary engagement varied amongst the participants and all of them stated more than one motive. However, social motives, wanting to learn more and develop their skills and also wanting to help others, were the most frequent motives among the participants. In the light of the theoretical background for this study, these motives can be understood as being due to the need of self-realization and appreciation from others, and also a wish to reach an ideal self.

Tidigare empirisk forskning förevisade samband mellan optimism och hälsa, likaså mellan self-efficacy och hälsa. Föreliggande undersöknings syfte var att utifrån könsskillnader mellan kvinnor och män undersöka hur op­timism och self-efficacy samverkar med deras självskattade hälsotillstånd. Deltagarna var 190 högskolestudenter, varav 113 kvinnor, i Mellansverige. Statis­tisk analys utfördes genom t-test, multipel linjär regressionsanalys och jämförelse mellan korrelationskoefficienter. Mätinstrumenten Life Orientation Test?Revised, General Health Questionnaire och General Self-efficacy Scale, samt ett påstående om fysisk hälsa användes.

The study's aim is to implement a textbook analysis and examine how women are described in history textbooks for high school and in the curriculums Lgy 70, Lpf 94 and Gy 11. The study has a gender perspective and the study's purpose is to make a comparative study and compare textbooks with the current curriculum and compare the results with each other to see if there has been any change over time. The survey's material is three editions of Alla tiders historia from Gleerups förlag. The study refers to editions from 1989, 1996 and 2011. General parts from Lgy 70, Lpf 94 and Gy 11 are also central for my study.

Competence Portals are software tools that are intended to make it easier for persons that have had no previous contact to find and contact each other. The portals can address areas ranging from finding an expert within an organisation to the marketing of the competence of a region or a research centre to other organisations. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the necessity of Competence Portals in research-intensive organisations. Important characteristics of the information in such portals have been identified and used as a basis for recommendations regarding how Competence Portals could be designed. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the task of finding a source of knowledge within an organisation.

The aim of this essay is to analyse certain succinct statements of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. His rhetorical style in general, and these statements in particular, are distinguishing Putin from other Russian political figures. The statements have survived the test of time and lived on in the media, on the internet and in the vernacular. They have come to be called Putinisms.The essay is descriptive and treats these special statements, describes where and how they came into being and analyses them on a micro level, word by word. The analysis is also qualitative as it covers selected statements, which represent only a small portion of all the statements made by Putin within the time frame chosen for this study.

Essay in political science, C-level by Mikael GranathAutumn semester 2012, Tutor: Freddy Kjellström- Ideological convergence in Swedish party politics?- An analysis of ideologies of the Swedish Social Democratic party and the Swedish Moderateparty and their healthcare and health service policies between the years of 2002 and 2010.The main purpose of this study is to examine the truthfulness in the common perception thatthe Swedish moderate party and the Swedish social democratic party are increasingly sharingthe same political views - particularly between the years of 2002 and 2010. The main researchquestion is:?Did the Swedish Moderate party and the Swedish Social Democratic partyideologically position themselves closer in the year of 2002 than they did in 2010within the health care policy area?The research design chosen for this study can be labelled as a comparative case study wherethe two political parties party programs and election manifestos that were current in the yearof 2002 and 2010 are studied. This is done to give a better view of ideological change.

AimThe aim of this study is to discuss process orientated education by identifying and describing general elements in two alternative pedagogies that in different ways attempt to separate themselves from the didactics in the traditional school. The questions are:1. How do the general elements for example the pupil, the knowledge and the lesson, in classroom education appear at a Waldorf and a Freinet school respectively?2. How do the general elements for example the teacher, the lesson planning and the overall goal, that teachers obey to and create in their lesson?s planning appear at the two schools respectively?MethodThe study is based on four days of observations in one ninth grade class at a Freinet school and a corresponding amount of time in one eighth grade class and one ninth grade class at a Waldorf school.

In 1998 the Swedish Socialist Government initiated a project in order to promote economic growth and to end the discriminating social and ethnic segregation in the greater city regions of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. One of the goals of the project was and still is to promote political participation in 24 of the poorest areas of the three cities. In a quantitative analysis I evaluate whether or not the project so far has been successful in promoting a specific part of political participation, i.e. electoral participation in communal elections. The results of the 24 poor city areas are compared with a group of 14 likewise poor city areas of major swedish cities.According to my hypothesis, general improvements of the socio-economic status of poor city areas ought to generate positive effects on electoral participation in communal elections.

Colour has encountered to be a significant part in marketing, which advantageously can be used in todays competitive market. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the colours varying associations and present ideas how colours can affect the hotel business. In coherence with the purpose we deveoled the research question, which resulted in following: How can hotels affect their servicescape and identity by the help of colour?The study has a qualitative method that began in an empirical problem that has been tested against theory, which subsequently developed the research question. This implies that our study alternated between induction and deduction.

Tidigare empirisk forskning förevisade samband mellan optimism och hälsa, likaså mellan self-efficacy och hälsa. Föreliggande undersöknings syfte var att utifrån könsskillnader mellan kvinnor och män undersöka hur op­timism och self-efficacy samverkar med deras självskattade hälsotillstånd. Deltagarna var 190 högskolestudenter, varav 113 kvinnor, i Mellansverige. Statis­tisk analys utfördes genom t-test, multipel linjär regressionsanalys och jämförelse mellan korrelationskoefficienter. Mätinstrumenten Life Orientation Test?Revised, General Health Questionnaire och General Self-efficacy Scale, samt ett påstående om fysisk hälsa användes.

The Swedish stock-market gives investors an opportunity to benefit from the global growth while financing companies invests and contributes to a socio-economic development. Parallel to the ownership of the funds also follows a responsibility as companies in the funds affect society and the environment. The growth of savings in funds, combined with an increased focus on sustainability has developed SRI (socially responsible investment). Therefore it is interesting to examine whether responsibility is an exception, which only concerns SRI-funds or a general principle, which includes the whole Swedish stock-market.The results of the survey makes it clear that all the Swedish major banks actively works to integrate sustainability within the respective bank's business to achieve a more sustainable financial system. Thus concludes the investigation that responsible investments are a general principle on the Swedish mutual stock-market.How responsibility is integrated in fund management differ between the banks.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how large Swedish corporations within the same industry protect themselves against foreign exchange risks and to determine if there is a general practice for how the protection is done. What is the responsibility structure at these corporations regarding the handling of exposure to foreign exchange?.

With starting point in the increasing ill-health in Swedish working life today, in form of for example absence due to sickness and early retirement pension, and the knowledge that the working environment effects peoples health in a big extent, I found it very interesting to inquire into how people within the working life experience health promotion and how this can be developed. A qualitative method was used to receive a deeper understanding for the employees? experiences and data was collected through semi structured interviews with employees on a bank called Ikanobanken, in Älmhult. The result shows, among other things, that respondents find responsibility and the opportunity to influence the learning processes and development important. It also became clear that the respondents find participation, motivation, communication and safety essential factors when related to changes in health behaviours.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant. By also documenting how much time we spent involving users we will show to which degree user involvement is effective. We found out that a couple of fast techniques could get very much result in the form of usability enhancing suggestions to the developers.

Numerous studies have showed that Swedish municipalities are responsible for several of the activities that concern children and their rights, e.g. school and health care. Furthermore, the Convention of the Rights of the Child is an international agreement that Sweden has signed and ratified which also implies the obligations that Swedish municipalities have. The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare, from a social justice perspective, how children?s rights are being emphasized and how children?s opinions are being taken into consideration at the municipality level in Sweden.