This study?s aim was to explore how the social media Twitter is used by Swedish political leaders and how they manage the relationship between having both private and public conversations in a new public sphere, the social sphere. In Sweden, studies in this area are yet to grow. We achieved our aim by responding to our three questions at the issue: What kind of content is published in each of the politicians Twitter stream? Are the politicians private or public persons on Twitter? Are the politicians using Twitters interactive functions? We conducted our analysis by performing a quantitative content analysis.

Following study is about motivation from a student perspective. Based on the prescribed literature and published research, the concept and field of motivation have been illuminated. The purpose of the study was to examine how students in ninth grade perceived their educational motivation and what kind importance they considered it had for their performance in school. The study is also supposed to base upon the result; clarify the differences if any between schools. In an attempt to get a clear image of this a quantitative method in the form of surveys was made on two schools in the Stockholm region. One of the schools had a really good merit value, and the other had a rather poor merit- value. By choosing a quantitative method a relatively large number of students where able to participate and equally large quantity of statistics have been presented. The result point at motivation in the participating students in both schools can increase and decrease through different factors.

The main aim of this master thesis was to examine the visual ergonomics and the systematic work environment management concerning lighting issues for nurses within domiciliary care. Further aims were to examine a few existing lighting solutions, to come up with ideas for future possible lighting solutions, and to evaluate if the legal regulations for lighting is satisfying and if the regulations are obeyed in domiciliary nursing.The methods used were a questionnaire completed by 55 nurses, field studies of used lightings in cooperation with a student in industrial esign, test of ten existing lighting solutions in a laboratory environment, and a field test of five existing lighting solutions tested by nine nurses in the home of the patient.The result indicates that 40 % of the asked nurses were dissatisfied with the working light in the patient?s homes. All respondents reported poor working light close to the patient, 50 % reported that this problem occurred daily. One third reported that they had to work in uncomfortable working postures due to insufficient working light, and 15 % reported risk of making mistakes due to the same reason.

The aim of the study is to examine a book used as level-based teaching material, Denmagiska kulan (Wänblad, 2011), to analyse the progression within and between thedifferent levels, A, B and C, intended for use in grade 1. The material is designed so thatpupils at different levels in their reading development can share the same literature.Another aim is to study the connection between illustrations and text. This literaturestudy is based on both a qualitative and a quantitative method of analysis. Thequalitative method applies a readability analysis with the focus on the graphic form andthe language of the text. The quantitative method measures the LIX (readability index)of the texts.

We have by Statistics Sweden (SCB) been given the task of using different dynamic regression models in order to forecast service price index for sea transport. The aim is to see whether these models provide better forecasts than those previously used. This essay aim to identify, estimate and evaluate the selected prediction models. Through our data material we were given access to 28 sightings of sea transport index during the period of 2004 q1 to 2010 q4. We have chosen to evaluate three different transfer function models, one ARIMA model and one naive forecasting model. The input variables we decided to test in our transfer function models were the price of petroleum products, the port activity in Swedish ports and the lending rate of Swedish Central bank. The results of our study suggest that transfer function models generally provide better models than the ARIMA model and the naive forecast model.

Forecasting is an important part in attempting to predict how companies will perform in the future. The more accurate the prediction, the more valuable are the results obtained from the forecast. This thesis aims to investigate forecasts of return on equity, and whether a disaggregation of the leverage formula into its underlying components affects the forecasting ability positively. This is conducted by comparing a model based on the leverage formula's components with a model solely based on return on equity from previous years. The study includes manufacturing companies on the Swedish Stock Exchange over the period 1998-2011.

The present study tested the prediction that male offenders are judged more harsly than female offenders for involving in a violent crime. Three-hundred and fifty-four adult students (163 men, 190 women, 1 unspecified gender) evaluated a hypothetical crimescenario describing a violent conflict between two parties, as part of a 2 (Informants Gender: Male/Female) x 3 (Offender Gender Triad: Male/Female/Neutral) x 3 (Victim Gender Triad: Male/Female/Neutral) between-subjects design. In situations involving male offenders, compared to female offenders, the informants judged the male offenders more harshly which exposed a double standard, as we expected. Informants also believed that it was more likely that a male offender was a recidivist..

The goal of our research is to give the general picture of the attitudes of immigrants to their own integration process into the Swedish society, focusing on the feeling of belonging, satisfaction with the social network, as well as confidence in the future. Moreover, in our study, we investigate a possible relation between the attitudes of the immigrants to the above-mentioned variables and their age and education. The research is based on a quantitative questionnaire investigation, which comprises all Sfi students at level D in the northeastern part of Skåne county. The research shows that the majority are open to the Swedish culture and traditions, keeping, at the same time, their own native traditions. Four out of five think that the Swedish language is important for integration.

2 (45)AbstractAuthors: Gunnel Forssell Ehrlich & Alexandra WinbergTitle: Gender in local press ? a quantitative study of four local newspapers Level: BA Thesis in Media and Communication StudiesLocation: Linnaeus UniversityLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: 50The report shows a quantitative study of balance in gender and position of power in the local press. The study aimed to shed light on the distribution of space in the newspaper between men and women, those within power and those without in Swedish local press. The study was conducted with four newspapers, during a month of time with local editorial news material. In our study, we have assumed Lippmann?s and Strömbäck?s theories of pseudo-reality and distribution of gender and position of power in Sahlstrand and Jarlbro.

This theises aims to extend the understanding of how representation of gender is produced and reproduced in the young women?s magazine Frida. We examine this through analyzing pictures of male and female celebrities in a selected number of magazines from the year of 2013. We use a quantitative analysis of the pictures, as well as a supplementary quantitative analysis of ajectives used to describe male and female celebrities in captions. We research what types of patterns we can find in these analyses that construct representations of gender, also surveying how the celebrities in the magazine look.Our analysis shows us that the context of Frida contains several recurring visual patterns that preserves a representation of men being superior to women.

This thesis takes as its starting-point the different stands on the ever ongoing growth of multinational corporations (MNCs) and its consequences. Two opposing branches of theories, arguing that the establishment of MNCs in developing countries is good respectively bad for these countries, are tested for the aspect of state capacity. A quantitative method is then used to test if there exists such a relationship at all and if so, which of the two notions that are right.The presence of MNCs is measured as FDI of GDP while state capacity is defined as a combined index for three of ICRG's Political risk indicators. The two variables are analysed, mainly by cross tabulation, using an extensive dataset of 130 developing countries measured for a period of 20 years.The outcome is though ambiguous: No solid correlation can be found, but countries with a higher rate of FDI of GDP tend to have a slight worse rate of state capacity throughout the analysis. Thus the result points in favour of the notion that MNCs are bad for developing countries? state capacity.

This thesis presents the implementation of a knowledge base system for rough sets [Paw92]within the logic programming framework. The combination of rough set theory with logic programming is a novel approach. The presented implementation serves as a prototype system for the ideas presented in [VDM03a, VDM03b]. The system is available at "http://www.ida.liu.se/rkbs". The presented language for describing knowledge in the rough knowledge base caters for implicit definition of rough sets by combining different regions (e.g.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the proposed leasing standard's potential effects on stakeholders' financial key ratios and estimated bankruptcy risk via prediction models based on accounting ratios. This is achieved by adjusting the financial statements in accordance with the three most widely used ways of dealing with operating leases at date; capitalizing using a multiple, capitalizing through a present value method and to not adjust for them at all. Since the discounted method is said to reflect the proposed standard the closest, this version will be compared against the two other versions. The research is based on Nordic retail companies due to their high share of leases. The study shows that the unadjusted key ratios and estimated bankruptcy risks tend to be too low and would therefore deteriorate in combination with the new standard, when again the multiple method results in too weak key ratios and high estimated bankruptcy risk and would therefore tend to improve in combination with the new standard.

?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.