According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

The study's purpose was to get a picture of what a number of class teachers know about and their views on the concept of working memory and working memory training and whether this affects their working and teaching in the classroom. The study is based on qualitative interviews and classroom observations and the theoretical perspectives that the study is based on two: didactic perspective and the socio-cultural perspective. The results of my study show that the class teachers' views and use of the concept of working memory is limited, even if they unknowingly working on parts of it in their teaching. All classroom teachers in my study term difficulties that can arise for students as concentration difficulties, which according to previous research can count towards deficiencies in working memory. All of the respondents in this study believe that it is mostly special education teacher who trains working memory, and that they themselves do not have that knowledge. They also believe that the classroom environment is important for all learning. Common to all respondents consider that the topic is important and would like to have more knowledge of how they can help and support pupils with poor working memory. As a special education teacher and teacher you often meet students who have trouble concentrating, and because of this may be difficult to absorb knowledge as when reading.

The pig is unique in the way that it gives birth to a large number of newborns in each litter. Because of this the sow has developed a special behaviour during suckling to ensure that not only a part of the litter gets all the milk. Milk is only available during milk letdown. The piglets have to massage the udder for a long time before letdown and the more piglets at the udder the sooner the milk comes. The sow has developed a special grunting pattern to let the piglets know when she is ready for suckling and to signal milk letdown. Our aim with this study was to investigate if sows have individual grunting patterns repeated over time. We also wanted to know if sows with a more distinct grunting pattern have better growth in their litters.

The purpose of this essay was first and foremost to find out the problems that exist around user education in a university library and the opportunities that exist for university librarians to improve their work with students. My method of use was qualitative and more precise qualitative interviews. By interviewing five teaching librarians with five different subject specializations, I wanted to get an an-swer to what they teach when they meet the students and how they view their teaching. Responses resulted then in an analysis using Christine Bruce's theory of information literacy and Carol C. Kuhlthaus theory of librarian roles and her theory of information retrieval process.

Idag är det många företag som misslyckas med sina implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem och många forskare anser att det beror på bristande användarinvolvering. Implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem blir allt vanligare i små företag, men effekten blir dock stor om ett mindre företag misslyckas med sitt projekt. Små företags misslyckanden är oftast relaterade till finansiella och humanitära kritiska framgångsfaktorer. Ett affärssystem kan ge ett företag en rad olika fördelar och möjligheter. Men för att ett företag ska uppnå dem krävs ett lyckat implementeringsprojekt samt att användarna omgående efter driftstart kan använda affärssystemet. Därför måste företagsledare under projektet se till en rad olika kritiska framgångsfaktorer som är relaterade till användarinvolvering.

The purpose of this study is to learn about educationalists´ apprehensions and their experiences of working with action programmes within the compulsory school's earlier years. Two issues have been composed in order to meet this purpose. They are also the foundation of the interview questions, which are enclosed at the end of the essay.The purpose with the issues is to look into educationalists´ work with action programmes. Another purpose is to find out how they consider an action programme should be formulated in order to function as a support for students in need of special aid.From the study the result shows that the apprehensions of working with action programmes are separating from one teacher to another. The informants of the study indicate the importance differs inviting both pupils and parents to participate in the entire process.

Guaranteed cohabitation of elderly couples is a new law that gives elderly couples the right to live together in special housing. Even if only one of the spouses has an administrator?s decision to live in special housing. The aim of this study is to describe and understand how three municipalities materialize the social rights guaranteed for the elderly couples? cohabitation.

Although Sweden is considered to be in the lead concerning an open-minded perception of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, very little attention has been given to the elderly within this target group. The elder LGBT population?s got special needs that haven?t been made sufficiently visible, neither as a research field, from social institutions nor from the LGBT movement itself. This study has described the target group's specific needs, based on the results of a focus group consisting of older LGBT people. Their experiences and stories have given an idea of what adjustments must be made to satisfy their specific needs.

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the problems caused by students that characterize themselves as highly sensitive. The issue of high sensitivity and other categorizations are fiercely debated in the research. This empirical study was conducted in light of literature about high sensitivity, pedagogies, and interview methods. The students answered questions about what makes them categorize themselves and how they believe that the categorization affects their learning and social development. They also responded to questions about what they consider appropriate measures to improve their situation.

Det finns i dagsläget få tids- och kostnadseffektiva metoder och tekniker för att mäta och utvärdera användarupplevelse över tid. Detta trots att tidsaspekten av användarupplevelsen under de senaste åren har uppmärksammats som en viktig komponent av användarupplevelsen inom människa-dator-interaktionsforskning. UX Curve och iScale är två metoder framtagna för att mäta förändringar i användarupplevelse över tid med hjälp av retrospektion och skapande av grafer över utvecklingen av användarupplevelsens olika dimensioner.Mot bakgrund av dessa metoder togs ett webbaserat utvärderingsverktyg fram med målet att undersöka verktygets förmåga att mäta förändringar i användarupplevelse under en utvärderingsperiod. Verktyget testades på 9 deltagare i en utvärdering av en mailklient under två veckors tid.Resultatet indikerar att utvärderingsverktygets dimensioner samlar upplevelser av relevans för de dimensioner som undersökts men visar också på att ytterligare testning och validering av metod och verktyg behövs för att fastställa att mätningarna är reliabla och att det som mäts är vad som avses mätas..

The aim of this thesis was twofold, on the one hand to compile a set of usability and accessibility guidelines in order to establish the characteristics of a user friendly website, and on the other to test these guidelines on eight library webcourses with user education to see how well they adhered to the guidelines. The methods used were literature survey and source studies. The guidelines found in the literature survey were divided into four different categories: document properties, structure and navigability, visual characteristics and accessibility. In order to establish the adequacy of the guidelines, I examined reference sources, mostly on the web. To a certain extent this examination has been based on HCI Human-Computer interaction theories.

Inkludering är ett världsomspännande koncept att sträva efter i skolundervisningen men kan detta uppnås när undervisningen inte kan göras lika för alla? För att få en bättre bild över var dagens forskning är på väg angående specialpedagogiska behov och inkludering har vi studerat en mängd artiklar, rapporter och avhandlingar, nationella som internationella. Utmaningen för dagens och morgondagens lärare är att förutom att kraven på att en likvärdig utbildning ska uppnås förväntas lärarna även ta hänsyn till allas unika förutsättningar och behov. Detta då lärarna ska möta ett ökat antal elever med inlärningsproblem och dilemmat hur de ska inkluderas eller exkluderas från klassrummet.Den här studien ger läsaren en idé om det dilemma skolor runt världen försöker lösa och resultaten pekar på att ytterligare forskning är nödvändig eftersom vi inte kan lösa dagens och morgondagens problem med gårdagens metoder..

This user study was carried out at the library at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg in the spring of 1999. Chalmers wanted to investigate how much their employees use electronic journals. To facilitate decision-making and be cost effective, the library needed to know about their customers' opinions. The main purpose was to investigate the usage of electronic journals, how the library's choice of these journals affects the frequency of use and what the attitudes towards them are. A questionnaire was sent out to 2 400 employees; 477 replies were received.

As the information society becomes increasingly flooded with digital images, the need for efficient image retrieval systems increases as well. To handle the vast amounts of data involved, the indexing process needs to be run automatically, using content-based descriptors extracted directly from the digital image, such as colour composition, shape and texture features. These content-based image retrieval systems are often slow and cumbersome, and can appear confusing to an ordinary user who does not understand the underlying mechanisms. One step towards more efficient and user-friendly retrieval systems might be to adjust the weight placed on various descriptors depending on which image category is being searched for. The results of this thesis show that certain categories of digital images would benefit from having extra weight assigned to colour, texture or shape features when searching for images of that category..

The purpose of this master thesis is to use marketing theory on the library?s activities. The marketing theory used is the 4Ps; product, price, promotion and place, as it's presented by Philip Kotler. Because the library can be seen as a service oriented organization Christian Gronroos theory of marketing in the service industry also has been used. A case study of the public library in Broby was made to illustrate how the public libraries? activities can appear in the light of marketing theory.