Assessing the emotional state in animals is important in order to establish the quality of their welfare, therefore it is important to investigate under what circumstances animals experience these emotions and to find indicators of their existence. The aim of this thesis was to detect possible behavioural indicators for positive emotions in dogs. These behavioural indicators could be helpful to increase both dogs? and humans? overall well-being in today?s society since they could help e.g. dog owners and caretakers to interpret behaviours displayed by dogs and their intentions so they can respond accordingly.The subjects used were 9 research beagles and each dog participated in three different treatments, assumed to be experienced as positive situations, where communicative interaction was initiated with the dog by engaging in 1) physical contact (P), 2) verbal contact (V) or 3) both physical and verbal contact simultaneously (PV).

Title: Nelson Garden AB ? Analysis and recommendations based upon the Service Management System Course: Business Leadership within horticulture and agriculture. Author: Annika Kirilov Tutor: Carl-Johan Asplund Examiner: Anders Kristoffersson, lecturer within business economics, LTJ- faculty, SLU Alnarp Keywords: Bröderna Nelson, Nelson Garden, Service Management System, marketing, customer service, retailer Aim: Explore how Nelson Garden AB manages to reach out to customers through positioning of their own labels, when they as a manufacturer are partly dependent on the competence and sales skill of retailers. Methodology: E-mails were sent out to 6 different companies with a proposition for participation. Of those companies that gave a positive answer the most suited company for the diploma work was selected. Thereafter, a contact was established through telephone with the CEO of the chosen company and relevant questions to him were formulated. The second time of contact the first interview was held and half of the questions were answered.

This thesis focuses on information seeking and use by volunteers and employees in women?s organisations helping women who have been subject to violence. These organisations for example provide help and support, legal assistance and temporary shelter. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with five women working in Terrafem, which is a women?s organisation directed towards women with a non-Swedish background.

This thesis lays the foundation of the future routines of effective error repotring fortraffic devices in the raiway sector.If a device, for example a timetable display, stops working it is vital that the device isfixed as fast as possible so that the travelers dont miss any important information.The methods that are used today are old and not very effective. It can take time forthe repairmen to find the right device or locating the broken component. At the sametime he is supposed to maintain telephone contact with central control throughoutthe whole session.The need for a new, more effective, system is vital to make the whole repair pfocessmore effective and let the repairmen work without having to contact the centralcontrol by phone.I started this work by examining the possibilities of assigning every object with aunique identifier (ID tag) that could be accessed by a manual scan device. The ideawas that the ID tag could holw information about the object and be obtained byscanning the ID and get the information presented on a mobile device.The work also included building a internet application that enabled the reader to seeand change the information on the ID tag.The result was a database that stored information of different objects which could beobtained by scanning the ID tag and presented by a internet application..

Background During the child?s first year of life there is a continuous contact with the Child Health Services (CHS) and the parents feel confident and involved. After the first year, the visits to the CHS is reduced at the same time as the everyday life changes for the family as the child starts going to day-care and the parents often go back to work.Aim To examine what it is like being a parent to children aged one to five and what kind of parenting support parents of children aged one to five are in need of.Method Semi-structured interviews were used to interview 25 parents in 21 telephone interviews and one focus group with 4 parents. The recruiting of parents was done on site at one open day-care and with the help of CHS nurses in Sweden. There were 10 men and 15 women.

This study investigates a Swedish educational project aimed to incorporate young people with intellectual disabilities into the labor market through internship. This qualitative interview study was conducted with six of the project student?s internship supervisors. The purpose of this study is thus to examine the motives behind the decision to take on a trainee from the program at the workplace. In addition, the study also aims to examine whether and how dif-ferent factors of the workplace affect the trainee?s opportunities for social inclusion in the workplace.

The aim with our study was to understand former addict´s experience of social networks from the Lewi Pethrus foundation (LP foundation) aftercare. The method we have used is qualitative semi-structured interviews. We have interviewed eight persons, four men and four women. They have all been in contact with the LP foundation and are today drug free. The result of the study has shown that the fellowship, in the different social networks have been very important to maintain a drug free life.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there are any similarities or differences between leisure-time pedagogs and primary school teachers' verbal communication with parents. Questions we ask ourselves is how the verbal contact looks like today, the desire for how it should be and the importance of verbal communication has.We chose to make a qualitative questionnaire study in the form of open questions to three leisure-time pedagogs, three primary school teachers and eleven parents were asked to answer.The results show that leisure-time pedagogs, primary school teachers and parents believe that verbal communication is important and significant. They believe that it is working well today, whether is via face to face, telephone or email. The verbal communication should be honest and straight between all parties. Parents believe it is important to know leisure-time pedagogs who take care of their children, in order to create a sense of security among parents.

The aim of this Master thesis is to study the public libraries' function as a place for people to meet. Four major questions are taken up: + Do the public libraries have the function of a meeting place? + How important do the librarians and the visitors find the libraries possible function as a meeting place? Do they think that this function is important? + What differs the public libraries from other places in society when it comes to the function of a meeting place? + What differences are there between a larger and a smaller library when it comes to the function of a meeting place ? The basis of this study are interviews with employees at a province library in Jönköping and at a smaller library in Sjöbo in Borås municipality. Our study deals with the history of public libraries, its functions as a meeting place, its architecture, culture, and statistics concerning numbers of visitors and loans of books. The conclusions that are drawn are that the public libraries have qualifications to function as a meeting place even if that isn't always the case.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

Today therapy dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) service people more than ever and different categories of work places use therapy dogs to help their caretakers. Many studies have been made on the positive effects in patients when they are given contact with a dog, but very little have been done on how the dog experience its situation and what kind of behaviour a therapy dog shows during its working days. This work was made to investigate the behaviours that educated therapy dogs in Sweden showed when they were in contact with a caretaker and to find out if the dogs showed any signs of stress or some other kind of discomfort. To do this a survey was sent out to 17 educated therapy dog handlers in Sweden that together had 18 educated therapy dogs. The survey contained 39 questions about the daily work of the therapy dogs when they were together with caretakers and some questions about the therapy dogs spare time. A question about what kind of dog breed the therapy dog handlers had were also in the survey to investigate if some breeds were more usual as therapy dogs.

ABSTRACTAim: The aim of this study is to chart the experiences of Swedish general psychiatric care on a Swedish University hospital from a relative?s point of view. The study focus on how they are meet, satisfaction with and participation in the care. The study is done as an improvement project.Methods: The study was conducted by performing semi-structured interviews with eight close relatives to patients on a general psychiatric ward. The interviews lasted for 20-40 minutes.Results: The result shows that relatives are satisfied with the way they are meet by the staff on the ward, that they appreciate staff that are open, down to earth and are inviting to form a good relationship.

The aim of the study is to describe social workers discretion when it comes to the relation between children placed away from home and their biological parents.The study describes how the social worker designs the contacts with the biological parents, for instance the extension for the actual meeting. The results are based on six interviews conducted with social workers who work with foster children. They have responded to questions related to the contact between children and their biological parent. The questions are based on eight vignettes. The contents of the vignettes show different conditions that affect the contact, for example age and foster care attitudes The results of the study have been compared to other previous research in discretion of the social worker and contacts between children and their biological parents.In summary the study shows that there is  high degree of independence for the social workers designing their work and that their level of discretion.

Behaviour problems are often behaviours that cat owners don´t like, but are normal to the cat. The reason to why cat owners experience certain feline behaviours as problematic is probably due to the current practice in cat housing. The ways that cats are kept today causes somewhat of a compromise between cat and owner and inhibits the expressions of the cat's natural and normal behaviour. The cat owners may misunderstand their cats behaviour, for example the cat owners believe that their cats perform certain behaviours because of feelings of guilt, hate, revenge or maybe to protest against something or someone. An animal hospital may help solve behaviour problems, but also help the cat owners to undstand their cat´s behaviour in an other perspective. The aim of this study is to investigate the need of a cat ethologist in animal hospitals.

The topic of this essay is the expected effects that can come during and after a mega event and how the local impact may affect the local community and the citizen. This essay concerns a forthcoming mega event, the Olympic Games that will be held in London 2012. The area that the Olympics will be held in is Stratford that is located about twenty minutes from the central of London by the underground. The Olympic Games is one of the largest mega events with its millions of visitors. The purpose of this essay is to study what is expected after the mega event has taken place in London.