In this thesis, the impact of collective Ratings on customers? perception of a product is examined. The empirical data comes from an experimentally designed survey where the effect of collective Ratings is measured in the setting of a traditional advertisement for a feature film. In contrast to what previous research would suggest be to the expected outcome, the authors of this paper concludes that in comparison with alternative designs of advertisements, there are no measurable advantages of including collective Ratings in advertisements from the marketers point of view. We find two explanations to the result: (1) people tend to self-report that they are more influenced by collective Ratings than they actually are, and (2) the advertisement which lacked a rating could be as attractive due to cultural interpretations of white spaces..

Calculations of net present value are based on a discount rate, which requires knowledge about the company?s cost of debt. A common way to do this is by observing the company?s credit rating, when no credit rating is given it?s possible to use a synthetic rating model based on quantitative data to estimate a credit rating. Thus, the aim of this study is to increase the understanding of which quantitative data, in terms of key figures, that can be used to explain the given credit Ratings for companies from the Nordic countries.In developing the model, key figures found significant in previous studies are being tested for whether or not they are applicable for companies from the Nordic countries.

Background: Investors use companies? credit Ratings as a base in their buy and sell decisions. Companies? credit Ratings are also used as indicators of safety in the legislation. This means that credit rating agencies have an important role in the society because they communicate the company?s credit rating to investors and other actors in the society.

The purpose of this study was to describe perceived psychosocial work environment and musculoskeletal complaints among baggage handlers, and to evaluate whether there is any linear relationship between them. The study is a questionnaire based cross-sectional study, and part of an ongoing larger project. Therefore, the number of forms has been limited to those that were collected in the project by 2010-11-25 (N=117). The questions analyzed in the study come from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire and ?Nordiska Ministerrådets formulär om besvär i rörelseorganen?, respectively.

Electrooculogram (EOG) data was used to develop, adjust and validate a method for drowsiness detection in drivers. The drowsiness detection was based on changes in blink behaviour and classification was made on a four graded scale. The purpose was to detect early signs of drowsiness in order to warn a driver. MATLAB was used for implementation. For adjustment and validatation, two different reference measures were used; driver reported Ratings of drowsiness and an electroencephalogram (EEG) based scoring scale.

There is a lot of research made on second language (L2) learning (Jesney, 2004). However the relationship between foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics within pronunciation tutoring is quite an unresearched area (Thorén, 2008). The aim of the study was to analyze how a course in Swedish pronunciation affected foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics among L2-learners of Swedish. A total of 41 people participated in the study: 16 L2-learners, 4 native Swedish speakers consisting a control group and 21 perceptual assessors with Swedish as native language. The L2-learners foreign accent and intelligibility were rated by the listeners before and after a course in Swedish pronunciation on an eight-point Likert-scale.

Author: Jessica Liljekvist and Emmelie Wiss CedergrenTitle: A miserable wretch that you should feel sorry for ? If social workers see persons who prostitute themselves as victims or agents. [Translated title]Supervisor: Marie ErikssonAssessor: Anders GiertzOur purpose with this study was to examine if social workers see persons who prostitute themselves as victims or as agents. We also wanted to examine how social workers see male and female persons who prostitute themselves. This study is based on the qualitative method and the result was analyzed with social constructionism, postmodern feminism and labeling theory.

 Pain is common among women undergoing first trimester surgical abortions. At the postoperative unit, department of gynaecology, University Hospital, Uppsala, the goal is that 80 % of the women should rate pain as £ 3 on a numeric rating scale (NRS), when leaving the unit.The aim of the study was to investigate how rating was performed at the unit and to investigate patient?s perceptions of pain after having undergone first trimester surgical abortion.20 patients (74%) participated in the study. Ninety percent of the patients rated their pain as NRS £ 3 when leaving the unit. Seven patients (35 %) rated their pain as NRS > 3 directly after operation, and 2 (10 %) patients NRS > 3 when leaving the unit.

The aim of the study was to assess the speech outcome in children with cleft palate operated with the Gothenburg Technique at Maria Sklodowska Curie Children?s Hospital. Eighteen participants with unilateral cleft lip palate were recorded and assessed through a single word test. Percent consonants correct and cleft speech characteristics were calculated after phonetic transcription. Intelligibility Ratings and velopharyngeal composite scores were reported.

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher Ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Hudiksvall Municipality will build a new preschool. The goal is that the pre-school should reflect the municipality's environmental goals and meet building regulations. The wall structures that are compared in the report is an insulated wooden frame and a frame of lightweight concrete blocks from H + HWall structures are compared within the areas of U-values, air tightness, thermal storage capacity, fire Ratings, moisture, durability, emissions and environment. In these categories the two wall structures will be rated in a scale from 1 to 5 and then the categories are weighted against each other. The weighting is based on Hudiksvall Municipality's assessment of the categories importanse for their final selection.The results of the comparison show that the concrete structure is recommended for the construction of pre-school with 27.55 points against the wooden structures 23.70 points.

The purpose of this bachelor-thesis is to investigate the possible effects of lease accounting on the estimation of bankruptcy. This is done by estimating the risk via prediction models based on accounting ratios for a sample of 43 listed firms in Sweden. Estimation is conducted twice for each firm, once base on unadjusted data as it is presented in the annual report of 2012, and one with data adjusted for operational leases (that is data is treated as if all leases present were to have been reported as financial leases). In the next step it is tested weather the predictive ability of the models is affected by this adjustment or not. For this purpose translation of bankruptcy risk into synthetic credit Ratings via interest coverage ratios is done.

The main purpose of this study was to translate Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and to evaluate its reliability and validity. Five speech-language pathologists assessed 35 adults who stutter with this assessment tool. Overall the results showed a very high inter- and intrarater reliability. A highly significant correlation between Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and Ratings of severity, made by the speech-language pathologists, strengthen the validityof Stuttering Severity Instrument 3. No correlation was found between the total score of Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and the self-report measure Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering, whichindicates a lack of social validity in Stuttering Severity Instrument 3.

Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit Ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors.

The main purpose of this study was to collect norm data for thegrammatical receptive language test Test for Reception of Grammar - Version 2(TROG-2), from 144 Swedish children, aged 8:0-9:11 years. Another aim was toinvestigate whether a change in the order of the blocks was needed in the Swedishversion of TROG-2 to keep an increasing level of difficulty. Other aims included toinvestigate the relationship between receptive grammar and word decoding, andbetween parents Ratings of their children?s language comprehension and readingabilities and the children?s results on the TROG-2 and a word decoding test. Theresults showed that the order of the blocks needs to be changed and that there wasno significant relationship between language comprehension and word decoding.Parents were better at rating their children?s reading than language comprehension..