Personal assistants ' descriptions of their own professional role are usually removed for the benefit of users ' description of the profession. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the assistants perceive their profession by providing assistants a possibility to talk about their experiences of the profession. Data has been collected by twelve interviews with active working personal assistants aged 22-57 years. Assistants interviewed have different experiences and working with people with various disabilities. The method used is a qualitative method with a narrative analysis method, where the twelve interviews have been merged into four fictional stories.

To efficiently examine volumetric data sets from CT or MRI scans good volume rendering applications are needed. This thesis describes the design and implementation of an application programming interface (API) to be used when developing volume-rendering applications. A complete application programming interface has been designed. The interface is designed so that it makes writing application programs containing volume rendering fast and easy. The interface also makes created application programs hardware independent.

This study illustrates how drama methods and career counselling might interact. The aim is to investigate whether drama methods can enhance career counselling methods. Drama is here defined as an umbrella term that includes all forms of action methods used in psychology and education.A literature survey was carried out in parallel with qualitative research interviews. Three professional drama leaders were interviewed separately. This was followed by a group interview with five upper secondary school students, who had all taken a course in drama with a focus on personal development.The findings show that there are common and consistent goals and values between drama and career counselling.

The purpose of the present study is to explore differences in the musical opinions and preferences and the quality of written language between pupils of two age groups (12 and 17 resp). Two classes were chosen, one from each age level. Each class/group was also divided by gender. The pupils asked to write an essay on their musical opinions and preferences. The essays were analyzed with respect to musical content and linguistic form.

Forestry affects most of the forest-covered land in Sweden. In the landscape, the most common stream type is headwaters, which are important sites for many processes and organisms in both the terrestrial and the aquatic ecosystems. The aim of this study was to investigate how the abundance of benthic invertebrate functional feeding groups in headwater streams develops after clear-cutting and if it also is possible to detect a change in the composition of feeding groups. The study also attempts to determine what factors have an effect on temporal changes in abundance of these groups. For the study, 11 sites in northern Sweden were sampled for benthic invertebrates using a Surber-sampler, and for each site canopy-cover and pH was obtained.

AbstractThe purpose of our study was to get a deeper understanding and a better knowledge about the study situation students with disabilities experience at the University of Kristianstad. Our choice was to focus on their experience of the supporting measures, the accessibility and how they felt they were met by both students and teachers. It was a qualitative study and it was based on interviews with eight students with disabilities at the University in Kristianstad. In the study we have used the theoretical concept of empowerment as an analysis tool. The different kinds of support the students with disabilities were using were in common described as positive and the students thought that the supporting measures helped them getting more independent.

Lack of political interest and will to deal with human rights violations carried out under the civil- military dictatorship, has characterized the transition and post-transition in Uruguay. The systematic use of torture, arbitrary imprisonments and forced disappearances in the relatively small country created a culture of fear that has been present through out the post-transition phase. Human rights groups have been central actors in the fight for truth and justice and against impunity. This study analyzes how these groups multiple democracy-building functions have contributed to democratic development. It also analyses how the democracy-building functions have been constrained by the political context.

This study highlights the differences in articulation, nasality and intelligibility between twenty 16-year-olds and thirteen 19-year-olds born with isolated cleft palate and control groups. The test groups are compared in a longitudinal perspective and based on earlier evaluations of velopharyngeal impairment. Significant differences were found between test groups and control groups using quantitative comparisons based on SVenskt Artikulations- och Nasalitets-TEst and NasometerTM. The longitudinal comparison also showed a positive but not significant development of the speech. Differences emerged in the comparisons based on velopharyngeal impairment but no significance analysis was made.

The company Sol & Energiteknik wanted to examine the possibility to make a standardhouse totally energy independent. Based upon this I have, during the spring of 2007,examined the possibilities available at the market today through litterature studies, contactwith several companies and reading reports at the internet.The first thing to examine has been to determine the energy consumption for a standardhouse, and find out if there are better technologies to be used for energy conservation.My conclusion in this matter is that there are possibilities today for building a house moreenergy efficient.When I had reached the point at which my design for the house was decided, I also hadto choose the different products to use to produce energy as well as to store that energy.To produce heat and electricity to the house I decided to use a wind turbine and a solarwater heater.The most difficult part of designing a house that is energy independent is that theproduced energy must be stored somehow. Storing the heat is relatively easy beacuse theheat can be stored in a large water tank. The electricity is a bigger problem beacuse itmust be stored in batteries, which today are too expensive to be used in a standard house.In the future producing and storing hydrogen might be used to produce electricity, buttoday that technology is both expensive and not tested enough.My final conclusion is that a standard house can not be built to be totally energyindependent today, unless it is very expensive to connect the house to the electricitynetwork. As an alternative solution I came up with a proposal for a house which isconnected to the electricity network and have some amount of own produced energy.This house prooved to be a good investment if you choose to build it today, and it couldbe a very good investment in the long run beacuse energy prices increase every year..

The purpose with this study was to investigate the client?s experience of Marte meo treatment and the procedure in the treatment from a responses and relational perspective, since the treatment occur within the social service frame. The theoretical framework consists of some central concepts. The concepts are experience of treatment, responses and relational perspective. The analysis of the empirical material has been carried out with the help of the concepts and earlier research.The method consisted of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with six informants.

The aim of my ?two years master thesis? was to examine school administrators perceptions about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control, perceptions about what role the teachers and the librarians have in teaching students information literacy and perceptions about the collaboration between these groups. My questions have been: Have the school administrators reflected upon the conception of information literacy? What conceptions do school administrators have about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control? What role do they consider the teachers and the librarians to have in making all students information literate? How do they consider the collaboration between the teachers and the librarians work? What role do they consider themselves to have on a management level to make all students? information literate? I used a phenomenographical method and carried out six qualitative interviews with school administrators from five senior high schools in the municipality of Gävle. Both public schools and independent schools were included in the study. Most of the school administrators considered information literacy to be the same as criticism of sources, which they also considered as one of the most important information literacy skills.

Consumer involvement in the product development process, co-creation, is being practiced by numerous companies. Previous research has investigated how consumer participation in co-creation affects consumer attitude. However, little is known about how co-creation affects the attitudes of the observervers of co-creation. The effect of observed co-creation on consumer attitude should be important when deciding whether to apply co-creation or not, as the observing consumers make up a larger part of the consumer collective than the participating consumers do. The paper at hand aims to investigate how observed co-creation affects consumer attitude and purchase intentions.

The aim of this study was to, using previously collected data from self-declared antisocial behaviour questionnaires, examine if the crime frequency has been different between adolescents that have either been referred to two different forms of open care in social service, child and youth psychiatric inpatient care or have been sent to Homes for Specialised Supervision. The criminality frequency and the most common crimes committed were compared between the study groups and further between genders in each particular study group. Statistical significance testing was used and the results of the survey revealed that juvenile delinquents that had committed severe criminal acts were represented in all four groups. The study group with adolescents in national care was the most different from other groups. These youths seemed to have had a lower crime frequency than the other groups with the exception assault and robbery.

Utgångspunkten för min uppsats har varit en dokumentation av ett rollarbete på skolan, en slags dagbok. För att få innehållet i uppsatsen så autentiskt som möjligt har jag valt att inte göra några förändringar i efterhand. Jag har under skrivandets gång dragit en hel massa slutsatser och skulle jag efter alla de insikter som förändrat min syn på teater och hur man repeterar förändrat uppsatsens innehåll skulle den i mina ögon vara förkastlig. Jag har istället valt att skildra den process som jag genomgått som tänkande konstnär, detta i sin tur leder till att jag ibland förkastar konklusioner som jag dragit bara någon dag tidigare..

In this thesis we have tried to answer the question of whether or not the peaceorganizations working in Israel and Palestine have an impact. We have answered the question by analyzing six different organizations; three who work with children and the other three with women issues. The analysis contains a case study of each organization and then a comparison between the two groups. This study is built on theories about; grassroots organizations, women in organizations and intergroup communication. Our conclusions in this thesis show that there are some similarities between the groups as well as there are differences.