This thesis presents the work of developing and testing a programming tool specially designed for children. The purpose of this tool is to make children capable of creating visual simulations and games that consist of actors interacting in a virtual world. The name of the programming tool is Behavior Cards, which comes from the fact that actors are programmed by giving them cards representing different kinds of behaviors. Behaviors are to some extent pre-programmed and can include general events specifying how the actors should act in different situations, in contrast to specifying every possible situation that can occur. The idea is that Behavior Cards should be easier to use than a more traditional text based programming tool, but it should also be expressive within the domain of visual games.

AbstractObstacles or opportunities? ? A study of the experience of collaboration of social welfare secretaries and school staff.The purpose of this study is to illustrate the importance of the work with children and youth through the joint efforts between different authorities. The study deals with the collaboration between the social services and schools in the Ludvika municipality. The objective of the study is to investigate how teaching personnel and headmasters in compulsory schools and the social welfare secretaries in Ludvika, experience the collaboration, and how this works. On the basis of the objective, we have formulated some relevant questions; To what degree are schools aware of the model of collaboration, which is the basis for collaboration within the municipality, and are there any differences in awareness between different categories of employees? Other questions deal with differences in how the social services and schools experience the collaboration, discrepancies between different schools in this regard and if the respondents? experience any obstacles and/or opportunities by the collaboration.Collaboration is, and has been, a pressing issue for a long time in the public debate.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the function of public libraries on the social web, focusing on reading promotion and reading stimulation. For an understanding of the larger context regarding public libraries on the social web, we conducted online interviews via email with people in the Swedish library profession, together with a content analysis of various texts on the subject found in library journals and on the Internet. Furthermore to identify the public library's practice on reading promotion and reading stimulation on the social web, we did interviews with librarians at a public library on their use of a blog for this purpose, together with a questionnaire handed out to the library's users on their use and conceptions of the blog.The conceptual framework of this study consists of four key aspects in the theoretical and empirical definition of Library 2.0 presented by Holmberg, Huvila and Widén-Wulff. The results showed that the public library can create a substantial value through its use of the social web, but it?s necessary to have a clear vision of the desired outcome.

A common experience is that leadership could be better handled during reorganizations within the social services. The purpose of this study is to examine how social welfare secretaries experience their managers during reorganizations. How do social welfare secretaries experience the manger?s role and actions? While developing the interview questions it became relevant to illustrate further aspects: To describe how social welfare secretaries experience the reorganizations that they have gone through and their experience of the everyday leadership around the managers?; openness, availability, clarity, trust and skills regarding managing stress among their staff. The study is built on qualitative interviews with six social welfare secretaries within units working with economical social assistance in different districts in the city of Gothenburg.

Uganda är ett av världens fattigaste länder i dag. Med en kraftigt utbredd fattigdom som försvåras av att landet har en bristande demokrati, vilket har lett till utbredd korruption i landet. Vilkoren för att skapa social välfärd och att bedriva socialt arbete är begränsat. Jag har i detta arbete valt att undersöka hur ett antal personer i Uganda med socialt arbete som specialitet, hur de ser på social välfärd i Uganda. Vilka hinder finns och hur ska man kunna bygga upp social välfärd som inkluderar hela befolkningen, var några av frågorna jag ställde mig.

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.

Our aim with this study is to explore socialworkers perception of what is a good treatment is and how to establish good relationship with their clients. We have decided to limit our study with social workers in Economic assistance and Abuse Units in social servises and explore if we can discern any differences between the units. We have chosen to use qualitative methods to achieve the aim of this study. We interviewed a total of seven social workers, of which three were from Abuse unit and four were from Economic assistance unit. One of the theoretical frame we have used is Goffmans (1970, 1974) theories about social interaction in which he explains the social encounter between social workers and clients.

With this study, our purpose has been to achieve profounded knowledge and understanding regarding the use of discretion among social workers specialized in social allowance issues. The Social Services Act, structured as a framework law in the Swedish context, provides the social worker with a certain degree of discretion, in order to enable accommodated decisions depending on client case specifics. This study problematizes these aspects of legal security, and our intention has been to examine which factors impact the assessments social workers carry out in statutory decisions of social allowance applications. To attain this, we narrowed down our intention into a number of distinct and delimitated research questions: (1) Which elements of the client case impact the social worker?s assessment? (2) Which external aspects influence the social worker?s assessments and decisions? (3) How do social workers decide the client?s credibility? In order to establish answers to our research questions, we have utilized a qualitative approach of research by exerting qualitative interviews in addition to a vignette study.

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 purpose of this study was to examine how professional workers understand the bullying problem among Swedish youth in the age of 13-15 years. The main focus was to examine the new phenomena electronic bullying, from a professional point of view.The biggest question to answer was: "How does the school and organizations understand the bullying situation among Swedish youth today?" Individual interviews with professional social workers within the school and nationwide organizations have been used to fulfill the purpose of this work. Two different respondent types were used in order to get a wide perspective and a dynamic view.Electronic bullying had increased, but the school yard was still the most common arena for bullying, according to the respondents. The schools tried to prevent bullying, but the social workers felt that they lacked some knowledge of electronic bullying, because it was relative new.

The purpose of our paper was to understand the motivators that kept the social workers within the profession. Social workers' have a profession that, to the greatest extent, means high working load and difficult problematic issues. On the basis of this starting point we asked us why so many social workers still choose to remain within the profession for several years. The purpose of our paper is to understand what motivates the social workers to stay within their profession. To understand which are the motivators, we decided to use the theory salutogeent perspective with Aaron Antonvsky's sense of coherence.

A personality test is a useful tool in recruitment contexts. Studies have shown that participants distort their answers in a socially desirable manner. The purpose of this study was to investigate if people respond more or less socially desirable depending on how they rate themselves in a personality test, based on the "big five" personality dimensions.Eighty people, (40 women and 40 men), 19-42 years, (M= 24,1 SD= 3,76) rated themselves on a personality test. Group one, (20 women and 20 men) completed the test on paper. Group two, (20 women and 20 men) completed the test verbally.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to create an understanding for if and how nonverbal communication and the learned gender structure influence interactions during employment interviews for executive posts. The study is conducted from a social constructivist perspective where it is argued that the individual is created through social interactions. In order to obtain understanding for social gender structure and nonverbal communication in social interactions observation has been utilized as a method. In addition an observation matrix based on nonverbal behavior and masculine and feminine hexis has been established. The results include both the specific individual?s and the general interactions that took place during the employment interviews.

The purpose of this study was set against the background that social media today are used as an platform for companies to communicate with their customers, as well as communicate their brand. Therefore it was interesting to examine this phenomenenon through a critical point of view and try to put light on the different forms of power that is produced on this arena.The overall aim of this study was to examine how PR-consultants talk about social media as a communication channel. The empirical data consisted of five interviews with PR-consultants on five different PR-agencies. The theoretical framework was based on a social constructional perspective and Foucault?s theory of power.

Bakgrund: Social media tillhörde den vardagliga rutinen för många. Gravida använde internet som den största informationskällan. Kvinnans självkänsla lyftes vid en positiv bekräftelse. Genom att de gravida fick ett socialt stöd och fick höra andras berättelser om deras erfarenheter och upplevelser fick de tröst och bekräftelse, ett sätt att finna välbefinnande.   Syfte: Att beskriva gravidas erfarenheter och användning av social media, samt se om det finns ett samband mellan självkänsla och välbefinnande.  Metod: Studien gjordes med en kvantitativ ansats genom en enkätundersökning. Enkätinsamlingen gjordes med hjälp av Mödrahälsovården (MHV) i Kalmar Län.