The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the research library of Linnæus University is used by students as a meeting place. Building upon Putnam's theory of bonding and bridging social capital and Audunson's conception of high and low intensive meeting places, it aims to explore the research library's potential for creating social capital and thus strengthening both learning and democracy in a university context. Borrowing part of the survey design from a study conducted as part of the Norwegian PLACE project, this study collects responses from 134 students as to their use of the library as a meeting place. The results show that the Linnæus University library is used for a variety of meetings of both high and low intensity, why it should provide a good setting for the creation of social capital. There seems to be a connection between how often one visits the library, as well as to which department one belongs, and how one uses the library as a meeting place.

The main purpose of this essay is to interpret possible pattern in social extraction, among future male elementary school teachers, at Karlstads elementary school teachers seminar over time. The questions that intend to concrete the purpose, and describe the possible pattern of social backgrounds are following; Where do the future male elementary school teachers come from? How the social recrutiment is divided in professional categorys, and is there any distinction in the pattern of social recrutiment over time? Which social groups were represented at Karlstads elementary school teachers seminar between the year of 1860-1940, and how they were divided.At the categorization of occupation, class- and social belongings I´ve used Sten Carlssons theory of professional categories (the social transformation in Sweden after 1866) which also was used by Kerstin Skog-Östlin in her dissertation Pedagogical control and authortity.The changes in the pattern of social recruitment of male future elementary school teachers were following; the proportion of students with agricultural backgrounds has decreased between the year of 1860 and the turn of the century. Further there was a substantial reduction of students with agricultural backgrounds between the turn of the century and the year of 1940. Students with agricultural backgrounds had the lowest represented frequency according to the investigation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the expiration day effect on a stocks volatility due to stock option expiration, which is every third Friday in the month on Stockholm stock exchange. Volatility is the standard deviation of a stock. It measures the uncertainty about a stocks future movement. When volatility increases, the chance or probability of a stock going up or down increases. It?s a common rumor among stock traders that stock volatility tends to increase nearby expiration day.

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibilities for children?s librarians to extend their competence in the area of reading promotion. The study is carried out within an ongoing reading promotion project directed towards small children from 0-7 years. The study aims to answer the following questions: How do children?s librarians develop new skills in a reading promotion project? How do children?s librarians view a broadening of the concept of reading and how does their approach affect which skills that are acknowledged?The study is mainly based on qualitative interviews with five children´s librarians who all participate in the project.

The aim of this study was to highlight homelessness through the perspective of formerly homeless men and women. The research questions focused on the informants experiences of the process into and out of the homeless situation and how their experiences could contribute to the knowledge about the social problem of homelessness. Besides the theoretical perspective of narrative and life course research, Fuchs Ebaugh exit theory and Honneth confirmation theory were used as theoretical guidelines.The empirical material consists of five life stories obtained through indepth interviews. The results of the study indicate that alcohol and drug use was of importance for the process towards homelessness. External factors as the change in the organization of the housing market in the 1990´s may also had an impact on the lifes of the informants.

The aim of this study was to investigate how selected municipalities? use social media, with a focus on how they are working to increase the dialogue between municipalities? and residents. To answer the purpose of the study three questions has been formulated: how do the communicators use social media in their daily work? What opportunities and challenges are the municipalities? experiencing with Facebook? How do they work with Facebook to increase dialogue with citizens?The theories that has been used in this study is Cutlip?s and Grunig?s public relations theories, Shannon and weavers communication model, Cutlip?s and Heath?s theory of issue management and Jenkins theory of convergence culture. The method that has been used in this study is qualitative semi-structured interviews and the analysis is done with a thematic text analysis.

In Jan Jagers and Stefaan Walgrave theory about populism as a political communication-style they claim that one can find this in the rhetoric of political parties. In their study of Belgian politics they found that the extreme-right party Vlaams Block has embraced this populism to a larger extent than other parties. Based on this theory this thesis aims at finding populism as a communication-style in three different Swedish political parties with the purpose to see if the extreme-right party ?The Sweden Democrats? will show populism to a larger extent than other parties, as was the case in the Belgian study.Based on Jagers and Walgraves operational definition of populism as a political communication-style this thesis applies it to the rhetoric of three different parties being ?The Social Democratic Party?, ?The Moderate Party? and ?The Sweden Democrats?. This is done in order to be able to clarify on the one hand if their theory is applicable to the Swedish case and on the other hand to what extent populism as a communication-style exists in Swedish political rhetoric.The method for this thesis has been a qualitative text analysis since and leads to the result that Jagers and Walgraves theory of populism as a communication-style is applicable to the Swedish case and that ?The Sweden Democrats? to a larger extent uses this political communication style, than the two other parties..

The purpose of this essay is to critically review three different contributions to the agency ? structure debate from a political science perspective. My opinon is that the agency ? structure debate is one of the main problems within the social science. The theories which I will examine are Lennart Berntsons theory from 1974, Lennart Lundquists from 1984 and Walter Carlsnaes from 1992.

My study is about how parents talk to their children about alcohol. The purpose of my study was to study how young teenagers communicate with their parents about alcohol. I also wanted to find out if parents have any influence over their children's choice of drinking. I have chosen to look at these questions from the perspective that alcohol is a cultural phenomenon, that children is a part of a family system and that alcohol can be viewed as a part of the children's liberation from their parents. I used a qualitative research method and interviewed five young teenagers, who are students at upper secondary schools ("gymnasium" in Swedish) in Lund, they where all under 18 years old.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the employability of newly graduated social workers is affected by the Supervised Practical Work Experience performed during the educational program. Four main questions were developed in order to establish an educated and concise theory: Does the newly graduated social worker?s choice of a specific Supervised Practical Work Experience affect their employability? Does the structure of the Supervised Practical Work Experience affect newly graduated social worker?s employability? What specific skills do employers within social work consider important for their organization? Is there a difference in how the representatives of various organizations within social work answer the aforementioned questions? The study was conducted through six qualitative semi-structured interviews. The people being interviewed work either as employers or recruiters in organizations from different areas within social work. Theories concerning organization and symbolic interactions were used during the analysis of the results.

The purpose of this study is to describe if and how a seasonal based company named SkiStar, learns through the exchange of experience and knowledge. We have analyzed gathered qualitative and empirical data to explore this subject. We conducted three semi-structured group interviews with employees from the SkiStarshop division. They described their routines and procedures in SkiStarshop. The collected data was processed and analyzed through our theoretical framework.

The aim of this study was to capture preschool-teachers thoughts and experience basing on the obligation. Are there any policies and procedures for preschool-teachers to use when suspicion that a child is being abused occur. Are there some factors that may affect preschool-teachers to report to the social service? How does the preschool-teacher find the contact with the Social Service? I conducted four interviews with four preschool-teachers, two of these preschool teachers are employed at the same municipal preschool and the other two are employed at two other preschools. The interviews were semi-structured and were conducted at each individual?s workplace.

Adolescence is more and more characterized by messages containing allusions and attitudes through social agents (family, friends, school and media). Therefore the purpose of this study was to investigate what significance the social agents and their messages, concerning sexuality, have in relation to young people's thoughts, questions and socialisation.The study is made from the young people's perspective. Our target group was 15 to 16-year-olds in ninth grade at a compulsory school in Sweden. The quantitative part of the study consisted of an anonymous and voluntary questionnaire among the students. To achieve a greater variety we made an interview as a complementary addition in which nine students participated.We found our main theoretical starting point in Anthony Giddens's theories about social agents, modernity, post modernity and sexuality.The conclusion was that the young people in our study foremost associated sexuality to sex, love, relationships and sexual orientation.

I have done a theoretical essay and to find out the answer to my questions I used literature study as my method. You can kind of say that I have used the literature as my empirical material, so my essay is in one way a qualitative study. I choose to have a social psychologist perspective to approach my questions. To answer the questions I have used a couple of researchers who a find relevant to answer my questions. I found Meads symbolic interactionism together with Goffmans theatremeatphor as an important theory to explain the social interaction.

This thesis is dealing with the programs of control regarding deceit and quality assurance within the Swedish social insurance administration in Skåne, the years 2002-2005. In 2005 the Swedish National Audit Office released a report regarding the lack of measures towards deceit and fraud, and the lack of quality in the data for decision making within the administration. The questions to be addressed are why the administration does not make up to the demands regarding quality and measures towards deceit that the government and The National Audit Office demands. The main source for data has been interviews with workers within the administration and annual reports from public authorities. To understand and be able to explain the problems within the administration the theory by Michael Lipsky regarding street-level bureaucrats is used.