The purpose of the study is that based on focus groups with personal assistants understand how self-determination and participation, expresses itself in work with the users. The study has a focus on the concepts of power and help and social citizenship in the context of self-determination and participation. We are interested to explore how personal assistants reason and argue about different design cases and situations related to self-determination and participation in the relationship with the users. For this study we have used a qualitative method and to collect our data we have used focus groups and different design cases (vignettes). To analyze our data we used the theory about power and help and the theory about social citizenship.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

Prematurfödda barn drabbas oftare av uppmärksamhetsstörningar, ångestproblem, isolering samt sociala problem och färdighetsbrister än fullgångna barn. Uppsatsens syfte är dels att undersöka om en grupp prematurafödda beter sig mer inhiberat än fullgångna, dels undersöka sambandet mellan inhibering och överbeskydd, då tidigare studier visat på en samvariation mellan ett överbeskyddande föräldraskap och beteendeinhibering. Gruppen på 20 prematurfödda barn (VLBW) och 20 kontroller bedömdes med sina mammor vid 3 och 24 månaders ålder med The Parent-Child Early Relational Assement. I 20-gruppen ingick 16 prematurfödda som även bedömdes i en större grupp (177 prematurfödda, 120 kontroller) vid 51/2 års ålder avseende självförtroende och blyghet. Resultaten visar på en signifikant huvudeffekt av prematurfödsel avseende inhiberat beteende vid 24 månader.

Denna rapport presenterar en undersökning av sex olika objekt-relationsmappningsramverk, nämligen Entity Framework, LINQ to SQL, NHibernate, Castle ActiveRecord, MyGeneration Doodads och Subsonic. Undersökningen redogör för styrkor och svagheter hos de olika ramverken samt diskuterar när respektive ramverk är lämpligt att använda.De ramverk som bedömdes vara mest intressanta var NHibernate och Entity Framework, då de erbjuder flexibel mappning mellan domänmodellen och det underliggande databasschemat samt god tillgång till dokumentation och litteratur.Undersökningen användes som grund för att besluta vilket av de aktuella ramverken som skulle användas vid en omskrivning av en existerande applikation för IT-konsultföretaget Sogeti. Det ramverk som ansågs mest lämpligt för applikationen var NHibernate..

The aim of the study was to see how men and women taken into custody care byLVM were described in the sentences through a gender perspective. The aim wasalso to lay more focus on young substance abusers and see in which extent youngsubstance abusers are judged to institutional care through custody care by LVM.Through a documentary study of 77 LVM sentences in Småland in Sweden, theintention of the study was to see whether women and men are judged and treatedequally or if gender makes a difference and in which way the judgement is different?The questions are in witch extent men and women are judged to institutional carethrough custody care by LVM and how the social indication LVM 4 § 3 b) are usedin the sentences when it is younger men and women that are substance abusers. Thestudy also covered a survey about how women and men are described in the sentencethrough a gender perspective and more focus is laid on younger substance abusersunder 30 years old. The methodological approaches that were used in the study areboth qualitative and quantitative with focus on the qualitative method.

The purpose of our study is to examine how parents experienced their participation and their involvement in a solution-focused parenting group. The parenting groups are a part of the social welfare system in a town in south of Sweden. The study is conducted as a qualitative study with focus groups. 11 parents have participated. The study´s theoretical framework considers solution focused theory, social constructionism and process within groups.In the study we found that participants generally perceived their participation as positive and that they received confirmation by meeting other parents in the same situation.

The purpose of this study has been to describe and analyze how seven Swedish preschool teachers and two special education teachers think and work with children who show a lack of social skills. The study method has been semi-structured interviews with the educators which have been analyzed and sorted under different themes/categories. The theoretical framework used in this study is sociocultural, relational and categorical perspectives. These perspectives have been chosen in order to better understand how teachers see their role in supporting children in need of special support. The environment in the preschool is found to be of great help and the teachers? approach is of great importance.The research emphasizes the importance of integrating thinking, feeling and behavior.

This study finds that the Swedish Government has a process for purchasing financial advisory services that is more transaction-oriented than the corresponding process at a Swedish private equity firm. The conclusion is supported by previous research comparing public and private sector purchasing processes. However, the differences between the two purchasing processes are not as significant as one might believe given the fact that the Government, unlike the private equity firm, has to operate under the Public Procurement Act (LOU). The tendency of the Swedish Government to apply a more relationoriented purchasing approach than expected is most likely driven by the fact that this represents the established professional norm for purchasing of professional services in the private sector. As LOU and the professional norm impose contradictory influences on the Swedish Government?s purchasing of financial advisory services, the final outcome depends on which of the two forces that dominate..

Evidence-based psychotherapeutic methods compete with each other, while meta-analysis have shown that variability due to different methods related to outcome is remarkably low. In this qualitative study six former patients were interviewed about experiences of method and technique in Affect-focused therapy, with a slight overweight towards unsatisfactory experiences. Responses were analysed and categorised in emergent themes. Methodological focus on affect showed to be a much appreciated, as well as insufficient, element. Alongside positive experiences or summaries of therapy, methodological frames were felt to be at times restrictive, even invalidating, as far as not allowing focus on what was felt to be the more predominant need.

Background: The Swedish fashion industry grows steadily, today it?s populated by many small and medium sized companies. Due to the big clothing chains dominant position small businesses risks to be ousted out of the fashion industry.Smaller companies may find it difficult to reach out to the customer by traditional advertising because their budgets are often smaller. It is therefore important for smaller companies to create loyal customers. If the smaller sized businesses in the fashion industry do not follow the rapid developments in society and focus on building strong brands and relationships, they will have problems with surviving in the long run.Problem definition: Which communicative factors are important in the choice of brand strategy to create a long-term survival for small and medium-sized companies in the fashion industry?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to analyse and evaluate the brand as a communications tool for building a brand image.Method: The data which is being used in the essay is collected from interviews with companies and survey of each company's existing and potential customers.Theoretical perspective: Relationship Marketing Perspective and Transaction Marketing PerspectiveTheories: Brand Strategies, Total Communication, Brand Equity, Involvement Theory, Service Value Profit Chain.Empiric: The empirical data is primary data gathered from interviews with a representative for each company and from the questionnaires distributed to the customers of each company.Analysis: The analysis is an interpretation of the empirical material collected from interviews with each company and customers survey.

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to compare the integration policy between Socialdemokraterna, Moderaterna and Sverigedemokraterna with focus on labor-market integration, housing segregation and language knowledge. The international immigration has in recent years increased significantly and this has also enriched the receiving countries and still the numbers of extreme right parties have increased. In Sweden a racist populist party, Sverigedemokraterna, are only a few steps away from entering the parliament. The question in focus is: What differences or similarities are there between the integration politics between Moderaterna, Socialdemokraterna and Sverigedemokraterna with focus on the areas housing, work and language?  By applying the theoretical framework to the data, I have been able to present answers and build up an analysis. The study concludes that there are more similarities than differences in the integration policy between Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna.

The main purpose in this degree thesis is to investigate changes in performance when introducing a newly produced Real-Time database in one of CC Systems products, the Diagnostic Runtime Engine, DRE. The thesis is a collaboration between CC Systems, creator of DRE, and Mimer AB, developer of the Real-Time database.The result reveals that the time spent on database access is considerably lesscompared to the originally used database. The research has lead to several additional requirements on the real-time database and these are presented as part of the result in this thesis. The additional features will help making the product more suitable for DRE and similar applications.Additional research is required to be able to recommend the use of this product or not. Primarily the performance in another operating system, Windows CE, but also the introduction of additional features should be investigated.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

This study examines how management consulting firms work with business- and functional strategy and how these strategies are interrelated. More specifically we focus on business strategy (business unit level) and knowledge strategy (functional level) and whether these are aligned or not, i.e. whether strategic congruence exists.A number of recent studies have examined the importance of business strategy and knowledge strategy in management consulting firms separately, but few have pointed out the importance of the alignment between them. With this study we contribute to the strategic field of research with a model that describes how management consulting firms should work with their knowledge strategy given their business strategy. The model is developed through a synthesis between theories in the field of strategic congruence, business- and functional strategies and thereafter tested by an empirical case study of six management consulting firms.

This Masters thesis is concerned with the complex planning process of setting up a citizen bureau in a public library. The aim is to find out how citizen bureaux are designed and to suggest a simplified model of strategic planning. The planning process is studied from a business perspective in the library context, and this perspective is also used to study citizen bureaux and their written plans elsewhere. A combination of qualitative methods are used: observations, focus group discussions and interviews. Observations in the public library showed a great need for an environmental analysis as well as structure to the planning process.