Forensiska tekniker såsom fingeravtryckstolkning har under senare år genomgått stora förändringar vad gäller exempelvis tekniska hjälpmedel, dock är människans roll i tolkningen fortfarande central i processen. Denna studie syftar till att öka kunskaperna om individernas kognitiva processer i tolkning av fingeravtryck genom ett experiment där fingeravtrycksforensiker, forensiker från andra fält än fingeravtryck samt noviser fick avgöra huruvida ett antal fingeravtryck härrörde från samma finger eller ej.  De kognitiva processerna studerades utifrån att testpersonerna fick rapportera sin tankar verbalt i form av att ?tänka-högt?. Resultaten transkriberades och analyserades sedan med mixade metoder (mixed methods), det vill säga med både kvantitativ och kvalitativ metod. Resultatet visar att fingeravtrycksforensiker signifikant bättre kan lösa denna typ av problem jämfört med övriga forensiker och noviser, men att det fortfarande finns kognitiva processer hos fingeravtrycksforesnikerna som medför risker i form av bias i förfarandeprocessen..

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness on the European Unions official website EUROPA, depending on which language is used to formulate the search question. Our main concern were if you get access to the same information depending on which language is used to search information The European Union has so far eleven official languages, and with the forthcoming expansion with negotiations with thirteen new countries to affiliate to the union by May 1:st 2004, the official languages will be even more. We have made a comparison between Swedish and English, using 29 different topics from which we formulated 2x29 queries. The topics used were found at the Swedish Governments FAQ about the European Union, EUsvar. We wanted the topics to be as authentic as possible to avoid bias.

Equality between the sexes has been discussed in Sweden for more than 50 years. In the 60´s and during the 70´s the discourse that dominated the debate was based on the assumption that both men and women needed to liberate themselves from their traditional gender roles. In this approach information and education was perceived as the key to equality. During the 80´s however, power and subordination became the main focal point of concern within this debate, and focus upon changing the patriarchal power structures dominating society were perceived as the principal key for establishing equality between the sexes. Today, the latter discourse still dominates both the scientific and the political perspective upon equality.

Child health care in Sweden is today automatically informed of newborns in the district and itis therefore natural for the maternal and child health nurses to contact and invite the new family to the child welfare clinic. So far the social services in the studied county have not reported new adoptive families to the child welfare clinics; instead the families have to contact the clinic themselves. The aim of this study was to investigate how social services inform the child welfare clinics of new adoptive families. The aim was also to investigate how and when the maternal and child health nurse thinks that contact should be established and what information/knowledge she feels a need of in contact with new adoptive families. The study has a qualitative design and interviews have been conducted with social workers, a representative of an adoption agency and maternal and child health nurses working in child welfare clinics.

Vid användning av metoden contingent valuation erhålls ofta olika resultat beroende på sättet respondenterna frågas på. Tidigare studier har visat att binära frågor leder till en högre estimering av betalningsviljan än öppna frågor, samt att skillnaden mellan dem är lägre vid användning av privata varor än vid kollektiva varor. Uppsatsens undersökning är ett steg för att förbättra förståelsen inom detta område. Syftet är att undersöka om de estimerade betalningsviljorna, härledda från uppsatsens experiment, inte skiljer sig signifikant åt då man använder sig av öppna och binära frågor vid utvalda privata varor. Resultat av t-test, där de binära svaren är justerade från anomalier, visar att de estimerade betalningsviljorna inte skiljer sig signifikant åt för sju av uppsatsens varor.

The purpose of this study is to present a critical analysis of how certain themes of the Norse pagan religion are portrayed in ten selected textbooks used for Religious Science education in grades one through nine. The themes included in the analysis are; the description of the transition from the Norse Pagan religion to Christianity; Adam of Bremen?s portrayal of human sacrifice, and lastly Ibn Fadhlan?s characterization of widow burning. By using a critical knowledge text analysis, and applying a theoretical starting point that pedagogical material analyses and interprets events from a specific perspective; in this case from a Christian perspective, I have from the study concluded that the chapters covering the Norse pagan religion in these textbooks have a distinguished Christian bias seen as the norm. The themes analysed in this study all describe different phenomena in a similar way and make use of the same sources, even though these are often questioned.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att studera om det finns en målgradient vid investeringsbedömning som medför en preferens för alternativ med kort återbetalningstid och snabba belöningar. Vi valde att genomföra denna studie med hjälp av en kvantitativ ansats, då vi genomförde ett experiment med studenter vid Blekinge Tekniska Högskola. Detta motiverar vi med att utifrån vårt syfte och vår teoretiska referensram, ger det oss störst möjlighet att generera ett intressant och relevant resultat. Vårt resultat visar tydligt att beslutsfattare föredrar att använda återbetalningsregeln före nettonuvärdesmetoden i en beslutssituation, och därmed ett fokus på tidsaspekten och när en investering är återbetald. 81 % av våra respondenter valde tidsalternativet i minst ett av de två casen.

AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.

The conflict over Western Sahara is primarily a conflict over sovereignty, with Morocco on one side claiming territorial rights, and the Polisario Front on the other side claiming popular sovereignty. The conflict has till this day not been resolved and is in a dire need of a solution. In order to determine which solution is the most appropriate, an understanding of all the complex aspects of the conflict is required. In this context, the study aims to examine the conflict in a globalized setting by analyzing how the American news agency AP News portrays the conflict. The US media conglomerate was specifically chosen due to its dominance over international information flows.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to identify differences and similarities, regarding security, in two goods terminals in an organisation in the transport and goods sector. In this thesis we use Cultural Theory as an analytical instrument to investigate organizational culture, as seen from a security perspective. Cultural Theory is a theory seen from two perspectives, the stable perspective and the mobile perspective. These two perspectives concentrate on different research areas.

This paper studies the research foundations created in 1994 from the former wage earners? funds out of a portfolio management point of view. Firstly it describes the seven largest foundations and their different portfolio management structures. Secondly it analyses the performance of these foundations measured as the intercept, Jensen?s a, in a linear regression of the excess returns of a portfolio versus a proxy for the market, as well as the Sharpe-ratio.

Det har pågått ett intensivt utvecklingsarbete på Statistiska Centralbyrån (SCB) under de senaste åren i syfte att standardisera och effektivisera statistikproduktionsprocessen. I detta utvecklingsarbete har fokus främst riktats mot processerna insamling och granskning. Ett flertal studier har visat att det finns potential att reducera granskningens omfattning samtidigt som den övergripande kvaliteten i undersökningarna bibehålls. För att uppnå detta krävs att nya arbetssätt, metoder och verktyg utvecklas och implementeras.Den traditionella ansatsen på SCB har varit att i granskningsprocessen försöka hitta och rätta alla databearbetnings- och mätfel. Ingen skillnad har gjorts mellan stora och små fel eller om felen har någon effekt på statistiken eller inte.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how children's librarians in public libraries use non-fiction books in their work to promote reading. My research questions are: What methods do children's librarians use för promoting non-fiction books? Are there children who can gain more from non-fiction books than other children do? Are there any differences in working with fiction and non-fiction books? To answer these questions I have interwieved five children's librarians about their methods, attitudes and thoughts on non-fiction books.The result shows that all of the librarians use non-fiction when it comes to promotion reading but not to the same extent. Some hardly use it at all, mainly because the schools that they are serving demands fiction books when practicing reading skills. while others use it but in less extent than fiction, as a way of separating the library reading from school work either because they want to keep the experience of reading in the library apart from school work or because they find it more efficient to do so.

This thesis examines the retrieval effectiveness of two Web search engines. The two search engines are chosen to represent two different types Google as a broad general search engine and Dogpile as a broad general metasearcher. Twenty queries have been used and the first twenty hits for each query were evaluated for relevance. The queries were invented by the authors, based upon their interests and information needs. They were expressed in a general manner, by using one or several keywords, in accordance with the simple search mode available for each search engine.

AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.