Människan är till sin natur en social varelse och många sammanhang förutsätter en viss social kompetens. Att ha social fobi innebär en stark rädsla för att bli utsatt för andra människors kritik och iakttagelser. Denna fobi leder till problem med många aktiviteter i vardagen, som t.ex. att läsa högt inför andra människor, gå på fest eller äta tillsammans med andra. Syftet med studien var att, med stöd av en arbetsterapeutisk arbetsprocess, undersöka hur några arbetsterapeuter arbetar med personer som har social fobi.

This paper was part of the ongoing cooperation between the Swedish Civil Aviation Authority and the Department of Psychology at Lund University. The purpose of this study was to develop a self-report measure regarding human factors, for the air traffic controllers to fill out before they start their working shift. This in order to aid the team leaders in their judgment regarding the air traffic controller's ability to perform at the right safety level. The self-report measure would also serve as an aid for the air traffic controllers who have a responsibility regarding their own performance. If successful this self-report measure would make it easier for the air traffic controllers to be alert regarding certain factors that can have a large impact on their performance.

Introduction: Mental illness is a public health issue which 20-40 per cent of the inhabitantsin Sweden suffer from. Many factors can lead to mental illness and because of that it isimportant that different organisations and professions collaborate in prevention and healthpromotion work. To develop the collaborative process by noticing difficulties and successes,documenting, follow-up and evaluation is of great importance. Aim: The aim of this literaturereview is to investigate which methods are used for evaluation of health promoting anddisease preventive collaborative projects, which focuses on mental health directly orindirectly, and find out what results these projects has revealed. Method: Literature reviewwith descriptive design.

In the light of the problems the media industry are struggling with, local news reporting is only one of the challenges the news organizations are facing. When local editors is being moved to the cities the tie with the local community is being severed.The aim of this study has been to analyze how the inhabitants of Vilhelmina municipality talks about their experiences of local journalism. With methodological inspiration from the Critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study examined the discourses of local journalism, social media, journalism's role and municipal policy. The theorectical framework consisted theories of media and democracy, convergence culture and discourse theory.The survey was conducted with four focus groups interviews. The focus groups were divided in different cathegories based on the participants experiences, ages and employment.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

In this paper respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was examined in relation to two kinds of threatening pictures, biological and nonbiological. Based on the results of prior research the hypothesis was claimed to note a difference between the two types of pictures regarding RSA and gender differences regarding cardiac activity due to the emotional stimulus. ECG and respiration were collected from 36 adults, 17 women and 19 men. There were no significant relationship between the different types of threatening pictorial stimuli, and no significant effects of gender were found. The results support some of the prior research on the topic but are in conflict with other.

Overweight and obesity among children and adolescents is increasing. Diseases which earlier occurred exclusively among adults are now also observed among children. There is an urgent need for new treatments that can change this negative trend. The aim of this study was to describe existing treatments for obesity among children in the age of 6-12 and the effect of those treatments. This descriptive literature study is based on 17 research articles published between 2000 and 2007 from different parts in the world.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate which factors the individuals found important in the process of becoming a person with a drug-free life. The framing of the questions we had were to get the experiences, thoughts and wishes of the drug users. The survey was based on thematised qualitative interviews and focused in the personal stories of the interviewees. We interviewed four women and five men, all of which had several years of drug-abuse behind them. We found similarities and patterns and we could identify that the three most important things was the own motivation, will and that the drug-abuser had the possibility to change their social network and had the ability to find other important things in life..

Studies have found that the applicability of commercial marketing strategies within politics have increased in recent years as a result of a rising number of swing voters. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effects of the commercial theory of incongruent information in political marketing in Sweden. Subsequently, an experiment with 742 participants was conducted, testing the effects of congruent and incongruent ad messages for two established Swedish parties. The effect of ad message choice on several well-established measures of ad effectiveness such as awareness, credibility, attitude, conviction and voting intentions was analyzed. The results showed that incongruent information effectively increases attitude, conviction and voting intention for voters who decide on the election day what party to vote for.

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 effects of the climate changes are expected to generate several substantial direct and indirect consequences on both ecosystems and societies. It is the extent of the negative consequences that determents the vulnerability of the things or the ones exposed. The knowledge of the effects and consequences by a changing climate provides an opportunity to take measures to reduce the vulnerability.Our society?s vulnerability depends on how we choose to act out of the existing knowledge and what measures we choose to take. Karlstad municipality has good knowledge and perception of the increased flood risks the climate changes will generate and the probable consequences that most likely will follow. How the municipality decides to manage the flooding issue is not just affected by the will to mitigate the vulnerability but also by the vision to increase the number of citizens.

 The purpose of this study is to examine how individuals' social capital can affect the opportunities for finding a job. That is, what benefits social contacts can provide in the hunt for a new job. The main questions that will be answered throughout this study are:- Of what importance are social contacts when looking for a job?- What are the advantages and disadvantages that the respondents present with recruitment thru informal channels/social contacts?-What are the advantages and disadvantages that social contacts can provide in terms of personal recommendations when looking for a job according to the recruiters?The study is based on five qualitative interviews with mainly recruiters from various parts of the labor market. The collected empirical data that the study has yielded indicate that individuals' social capital of the highest degree is crucial for the opportunities they have to find a job.

The purpose with this study was to get a deeper understanding of how the social welfare secretaries experience the meeting with clients.Our main questions were how the social welfare secretaries thinks about their own way to behave in the meeting with clients, which difficulties/obstacles there can be a and which factors they think affect the meeting. What is it that makes the social welfare secretaries experience a meeting as good or less good.Theory used: ?naive theory? and ?theory of communication?. The social welfare secretaries emphasised the importance of respect and clarity in their relations with the clients. By contrast with literature, the hover between power and support was not found difficult.The goal is that the social welfare secretaries and the clients understand each other and that they reach the purpose with the meeting..

The purpose of my study is to gain insight into how the education system (particularly social studies) is morally-minded based on the governing documents, former students and a textbook. I wanted to find out what morally-minded means and if it has a big role in social studies. Through interviews with former high school students (when my thesis is aimed at high school) I wanted to find out how they felt their social studies were educational and which the values that they had taken on from the lessons. I also chose to analyze a textbook to get a broader understanding of how the morally-minded education is written in specific areas relating to social studies. My study is a qualitative study and what I came up with is that the former students consider their social studies teaching lacked to some degree when it came to the morally-minded education. My investigation concludes that the morally-minded education is important in social studies as the purpose of social studies is to promote active democratic citizens.

The aim with the literature study was to describe how persons with dementia and health care workers in the geriatric care experiences soft massage and to describe the derived effects for persons with dementia. Scientific articles were sampled from the databases: Medline (Pub Med), Cinahl and Psyc INFO. The main results of the study are presented in three parts: how persons with dementia experiences soft massage, health care workers experiences of giving soft massage and the health care workers descriptions on derived effects on persons with dementia. The results showed that persons with dementia experienced a positive reaction to soft massage and the health care workers did no longer feel helpless in their care service towards persons with dementia. The studies showed that soft massage decreased agitation, wandering, pain and sleeplessness.