Evidensbaserad praktik inom socialtjänsten förutsätter att de professionella ställer sig positiva till forskningsbaserad kunskap om insatser och användandet av bedömningsinstrument. I vår studie undersöks vilken tilltro socialarbetare på vuxenenheten i en mindre stad har till bedömningsinstrumentet Addiction Severity Index (ASI). Studien är en kvalitativ undersökning och semistrukturerade intervjuer valdes som metod för att besvara syfte och frågeställningarna. Sammanlagt har sex respondenter intervjuats varav fyra handläggare, en projektledare samt enhetschefen på verksamheten. Forskning visar att handläggare upplever olika fördelar och nackdelar i användandet av ASI.

The purpose of this study was to understand how social workers experienced working with Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in relation to the goal set by the National Board of Health and Welfare. The method is spread nationwide and therefore it is of great importance to examine how the social workers themselves experience the demands and the resources surrounding ASI. We choose to do a qualitative study interviewing eight social workers at six different occasions. The result was analyzed using Max Weber?s ideal type bureaucracy and Michael Lipsky?s thesis on street-level bureaucrats.

Human presence has always influenced the surrounding areas, the forest as well. Structure and species composition have changed during human land use. Knowledge regarding these changes should be of great interest for conservation and forestry. We have analyzed human impact on the tree species composition on five study sites during 2000 years in Ångermanland, Sweden. More specifically the change in tree species composition in percentage amongst alder, birch, spruce and pine over time.

The cadastral index map is a great benefit to the surveying and governments. The map's main purpose is to show how the overall cadastral division looks in Sweden. The lack of quality of the cadastral index map dose not allows property-owners to know where to draw the boundary between their and others' property. In order to know where to find the boundaries between two properties, is it up to the property-owners themselves (self or in company by the other property-owner) to construct various usucaption at the boundaries. The main objective of the study is to verify the existence and extent of usucaption on forest properties in Bodan, a village outside Skellefteå.

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 thesis presents an optimally designed kinematic structure for a new 6-DOF haptic devicebased on TAU configuration. The configuration of the TAU-2 proposed by Suleman Khan andKjell Andersson [1] was modified and its mobility was verified by using Grübler criterion tohave a 6 DOF. Analytical kinematic models for the inverse and forward kinematics weredeveloped for the haptic TAU configuration to determine a set of optimal design parameters.Kinematic performance indices such as volume of the workspace, kinematic isotropy and payload index, were defined based on the singular values of the Jacobian matrix. The Jacobianmatrix was scaled to homogenize the physical units. The Jacobian matrix dependent on theposition and orientation of the end-effector gives local isotropy and pay load index, so globaldesign indices were defined, which represent the performance of the mechanism in the wholeworkspace.

Objective: In recent years there has been an increasing interest within the clinical (medical) science in measuring people?s health. When estimating quality of life, present practise is to use the EQ-5D questionnaire and an index which weighs the different questions. The question is what happens if the individuals estimate there own health, would it differ from the public preferences? The aim is to make a new prediction model based on the opinion of patients and compare it to the present model based on public preferences.Method: A sample of 362 patients with unstable coronary artery disease from the Frisc II trial, valued their quality of life in the acute phase and after 3, 6 and 12 months.

Background: There has been an increase in savings and investment in recent years along with an increased interest in responsible investments. Ethical mutual funds has developed and gained increasingly popularity.Aim: The aim of the study is to examine if ethical mutual funds are an equivalent alternative to traditional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return on the Swedish stock market.Theory: Beta, Jensen's Alpha, Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, and Modern Portfolio Theory.Method: Quantitative survey method, a statistical study.Conclusion:The study concludes that there is no significant difference between ethical and conventional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return. The small differences that exist between the two fund groups are in favor of the ethical fund group, indicating that funds is a comparable investment option compared to traditional mutual funds..

The first four AP-funds have a well-diversified Swedish portfolio, which is managed in similar way as the largest Swedish bank funds. Up until today, there has not been any comparable study that focuses specifically on this part of the AP-funds. Our aim is two-folded; First we will look at how well the AP-funds have managed their Swedish assets compared with Swedish funds of the four largest banks in Sweden during 2002-2006. This will be done by looking at some important key ratios and both absolute and active return. Secondly we will present a descriptive analysis of the management structure within the respective organisations, to be able to draw conclusions regarding the possible deviations in investment return.

Syftet är att undersöka om Sverige tillsammans med ett eller flera av de nordiska länderna kan utgöra en optimal valutaunion. Utifrån ett svenskt perspektiv visar resultaten att det är lämpligast för Sverige att ingå i en valutaunion med Norge och Danmark eftersom den ekonomiska integrationen mellan dessa länder har varit störst. Taylors ränteregel visar att Sverige och Norges räntebanor samvarier mest och Optimal currency area-index (OCA-index) visar att Sverige, Danmark och Norge präglas av störst ekonomisk integration.Vi har använt två olika metoder för att undersöka en optimal nordisk valutaunion utifrån ett svenskt perspektiv, OCA-index och Taylors ränteregel. De båda tillvägagångssätten fokuserar på hur ekonomiskt integrerade länderna är, men genom olika variabler och ekonomiska storheter. Ett OCA-index har skapats och skattningen visar att variabeln som beskriver konjunkturcykeln är den som har störst inverkan på den beroende variabeln, växelkursvolatilitet.

This study aim?s to examine how conceptions regarding culture and ethnicity influence the daily work of personnel in integration projects financed by the European Social Fund (ESF). The method of this study was individual semi-structured interviews with nine persons working in three different projects. The reason why we have chosen these specific projects was because of their work with immigrant participants. Concepts that our study is based on was culture and ethnicity, but also the theory considering in-groups and out-groups.

This thesis is focusing on how global and local search engines retrieve information from the local domain. The three search engines tested are the global search engines Yahoo, Ask.com and the local search engine Web Wombat. The questions we examined were: which search engine has the best retrieval effectiveness? Could there be other reasons than retrieval effectiveness, to choosing a local search engine?For our test we constructed 20 questions related to Australia.We chose to divide the questions into topics like nature, sports and culture. For all questions we evaluated the relevance of the first 20 hits.

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur den svenska versionen av WAIS-IV förhåller sig till sin föregångare WAIS-III. Samma försökspersoner testades vid två olika tillfällen med såväl WAIS-IV som WAIS-III för att undersöka om det förelåg skillnader mellan försökspersonernas testresultat från de två olika versionerna. Resultatet visade att det för hela gruppen försökspersoner förelåg signifikanta positiva och starka korrelationer mellan jämförda index och deltest, vilket tyder på att jämförda index och deltest mäter liknande kognitiva konstrukt. Avseende index; IK Hela skalan (HIK) förelåg i samtliga grupper, oavsett administrationsordningen för de två versionerna av skalorna, en signifikant högre genomsnittlig IK-poäng vid testning med WAIS-III jämfört med den genomsnittliga IK-poäng som erhölls vid testning med WAIS-IV. Denna differens kan tolkas som en konsekvens av Flynn-effektens påverkan på försökspersonernas genomsnittliga poängresultat.

I denna rapport undersöktes S&P 500 Energy Index genom multipel regressionsanalys. Modellerframställdes genom regression och baserades på data hämtad från börsen. Modellerna angavs iprocentuell ändring respektive absolut ändring. Validitet för varje enskild kovariat testades och en risknivå avgjorde om en kovariat skulle inkluderas i modellen eller inte. Detta ledde till två modeller med bättre kurvanpassning till den givna mängd data över det valda energiindex.

En aktieindexobligation är en strukturerad produkt vilken är uppbyggd av två finansiella instrument, en obligation och en option. Obligationen garanterar det nominella beloppet i de fall aktieindexobligationen behålls löptiden ut. Optionen ger i sin tur möjlighet till avkastning med hävstångseffekt. Genom att aktieindexobligationens nominella belopp är garanterat har produkten en begränsad förlustrisk. En aktieindexobligation är dock inte riskfri.