New family stuctures are constantly emerging in society. Are these changes mirrored in foster care practice? The aim of this study was to explore to what extent homosexual families are represented when a child is given a foster home. The nuclear family has throughout history been assured a stable position both in society as well as in the foster care practice. During the last ten years a homosexual relationship has been legaly accepted through different amendents and it has also been more integrated and accepted in society.

The purpose of this study was to examine how young managers (26-32 years old) in municipal old-age care organizations, in Skåne and Blekinge, experience their professional roles as managers in relation to their age. One of the questions asked in this study was whether managers experienced that their age affected their managerial position, and in that case, how? In order to investigate this, a qualitative method was used, including interviews and observations. Seven interviews with young managers were conducted. My approach in the working process was influenced by Grounded theory as defined by Glaser and Strauss (1968).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of social distance used by the librarians and users in the virtual reference interview. With a conversational analysis and applied politeness theory 49 chat transcripts where analysed in order to answer the question of how the interlocutors positioned themselves regarding the social distance between them. By identifying what communicative strategies where used the following results were found. Generally the social distance between librarians and users is low in the Swedish virtual reference interview. Even though both parties used informal and casual language the results indicate that the librarians face wants were valued slightly higher than the users which were illustrated by a some what higher social distance in the stages of the conversations when the librarians face was under most threat.

Our purpose with this essay is to examine how staff that works with drugaddicts in compulsory-treatment institutions for women and men uses gender in their work. We are trying to get knowledge and understand how the staff is using their own and the client's gender in the work that they are doing. We have chosen to take focus within women's care in institutions and compare if the work is done in the same way with male clients.Our essay is based on interviews with treatment-staff. We have used a qualitative method. The interviews are made with both men and women.

Att konsumera kosttillskott ökar i dagens samhälle. Exempel på kosttillskott är energigivande tillskott, prestationshöjande tillskott samt vitaminer och mineraler. En sammanställning av enkätundersökningar i Sverige visar att 61 % av männen och 41 % av kvinnorna konsumerar kosttillskott. Träningsverksamma upplever att produkterna är välgörande och ger positiva effekter på träningen, trots att riskerna med konsumtion av kosttillskott är omdebatterat och ett delvis obeforskat område. Bland träningsverksamma inom styrketräning förekommer även konsumtion av dopningspreparat.

In this essay, I have studied the image of the drug abusing mother and her motherhood as seen in some of the social science literature on drug abusing women. This I did with a qualitative research design and with the questions:How is the drug abusing mother and her motherhood portrayed by social scientists?What signification is her motherhood given in her life by the researchers?What approach towards the drug abusing mother in the research process, and hence in the creation of the images of her, does the scientists have?I found that there are distinct patterns and themes in the research on mothers with a drug abuse. The researchers studied the women with the goal to understand them and to give them the opportunity to speak for themselves through the researcher. The drug abusing mother is in short portrayed as a woman who cares for her children, whose motherhood is one of the most important factors in her life and who is anxious that her substance abuse should not threaten it.

This essay is a study of the use of IT technology by teachers of English and History at a Swedish upper secondary school. It is based on four interviews and four observations. In my analysis of these I have made use of the theory of Social Shaping of technology, a theory which puts emphasis on a teacher´s purpose regarding the use of IT technology in order to empower the teaching process. As a researcher I aim to explore the reasoning on the part of the teacher and to that end I use the method of interviews and observations. This study shows different ways of using IT technology varying from one teacher to another.

How do probation inspectors describe their female clients and female offenders? Are there any discrepancies in treatment between male and female clients? In what way is the social interaction between female clients and inspectors constructed and described?  These are the issues we have explored in this study. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with a total of nine probation inspectors; six women and three men, were used in order to examine the probation inspectors? constructions of clients and the construction of interaction between them. By applying Foucault?s theory of power relations, Hirdman?s gender theory and Olsson?s theory of preconceptions when analyzing the results five themes were identified; descriptions of the work of the female client, descriptions of the interaction with the female client, descriptions of the female offender, descriptions of backgrounds why women commit crimes and descriptions of society's view on the female offender.

Hemmasittare is a new term for children and youths with a history of long term truancy. As the term indicates these youths spend most of their time in their homes. This often results in them being socially alienated and the loss of their earlier social network. The consequences of hemmasittande and social alienation are many and include not only a deficient social network but also psychological and physical problems. Research has shown that many of these problems follow on through into adult life.

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of threats and violence among four social workers at a social services' reception center for individual and family care. The study uses semistructured interviews and an abductive approach. The analysis is based on previous research, communication theory, coping and sense of coherence, SOC. The study shows that the studied workplace isn't considered to be particularly exposed to threats and violence, although all four respondents have experienced threats and/or violence. The respondents make a difference between threats and harsh words from clients because they consider their clients are entitled to be upset considering the nature of the work conducted at the workplace.

The focus of this thesis is on what is considered to be a suitable foster home. For the study to be carried out an application had to be made to get access to the foster home assessments in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. With the support of attachment theory and theory of standards different categories have been picked out and analyzed in foster home assessements that have been approved. The conclusion to what is considered to be a suitable foster home is a complex issue, as there are many factors that are interacting. Social workers seem to focus on the importance of a family?s ability to provide some kind of stability and security for a child who is considered to be placed within their home.

This is a thesis about the American empire. I also focus my work to see if this American empire is declining. The two main questions I ask and want to answer in this thesis are: is America an empire and is it in decline?I first conclude that America has been an empire ever since the end of the Second World War. The sheer military and economic power of the American empire matches and exceeds the ones before them.

This is a qualitative study which purpose is to examine how the social workers in a medium-sized municipality in southern of Sweden are experiencing the different forms of housing that the municipality has for disposal. The purpose is also to examine opinions - belonging to the social workers? representatives - concerning the value of motivational work in changing the lifestyles of assaulted and addicted women. The questions we have decided to examine are; how is the social services' work with assaulted and addicted women designed, how do the social workers experiences the situation on these forms of housing and what the social workers believe is promoting and inhibiting factors for motivation with assaulted and addicted women. The results in this study are built on qualitative semi-structured interviews with social workers where both sexes are represented.

The aim of this thesis is to study social tagging in an OPAC by looking at the tags of Ann Arbor District Library?s catalogue. In this thesis I analyse the possibilities of social tagging. The main questions to be answered are what is the distribution of tags in different categories, what are the differences between fiction and non-fiction and how do the social tags differ from the terms of the professional indexing practice. Studying 500 tags I find that subject matter was the most frequent category for tags assigned to fiction and non-fiction.

Several previous studies have in different ways tried to explain how new social movements are affected by the different sets of political and social contexts within different states and societies. This essay asks the question how much the institutional aspects within the theory of Political Opportunity Structures (POS) have determined how the rather successful animal rights movements in the Netherlands and Great Britain have mobilized and acted to gain progress. Since the Netherlands and Great Britain contains different kinds of political and institutional contexts, these two states are found to be suitable for a comparative analysis of the theory's durability. A qualitative portrayal of both state's institutional political opportunity structures are presented. Then the mobilization, progress, and actions of the political party ?Party for the Animals? in the Netherlands, and a wide group of animal rights organisations in Great Britain are determined.