This thesis seeks to explain the effect of private equity ownership on the amount of invest- ments made in a company. We use three capital expenditure based key ratios to determine if there is a tendency for private equity owned firms to invest more or less than comparable companies. Our dataset involve 27 Swedish buyout companies that were sold by a private equity fund between 2001 and 2009. Each buyout is assigned a peer group of two firms in similar size and in the same industry. Firstly, we compare the key ratios to determine potential differences in the level of investment.

The purpose of this study is to describe how the employee appraisal is perceived by managers, employees and representatives from human resources departments. The empirical material con-sists of 15 interviews: respondents were two representatives of the human resources departments, four unit managers and nine employees who work at a state institution or municipal management. In the study, I adopt a sociocultural perspective, with the communicative relational perspective. The latter is a special education perspective in which the interpenetration of participation, com-munication and learning emphasized.The result shows that the majority of employees would like to see that the talks will be held more frequently than once a year. One of the managers has in cooperation with his co-workers devel-oped a model based on that each year, in addition to salary talks, have an individual conversation, a conversation with each group and individual follow-up talks.

This Masters thesis concerns collaboration between teachers and librarians. Three theoretical perspectives, profession, power and legitimacy, are used to analyse the results of written interviews with eight teachers and one librarian at a comprehensive school. We did not find evidence of any deeper collaboration between teachers and the librarian. The effects of profession had little impact on the relation although the involved parties seemed to appreciate differences in education and points of view. The teacher retains power over education and grades while the librarian holds sway over the physical library and the purchase of books and other media.

The purpose of this study is to identify how the needs, demands and preferences for a certain service appear among University students in Kalmar. This is necessary to examine in order to create and design a possible service that will solve the problem with the University students eating habits.This study is based on a qualitative method with quantitative elements. The qualitative method contains of three focus group discussions. The quantitative method contains of a questionnaire. All respondents in this study fits in the target group.One important conclusion that we have stated after the investigation of this study, is that the nature of this problem seems to differ from person to person.

It has been shown in various research contexts that action programs do not always work as they should, even though there are clear guidelines on how the action programs should be designed and used. The aim of this study is to illustrate which processes that occur before an action program as well as how these processes lead to action that will give the student the support he or she needs. Through qualitative interviews with eight teachers, I have tried to answer the questions that I created. I have tried to answer my research questions that I have made based on the purpose. The questions are; What type of inquiry will be done if a student risk to not reach the knowledge goals? How will the inquiry support the action program? In what way does the action program support pupils in special needs? The result of my survey show that the survey being done for an action program is very individual-focused and that the mapping rarely shows on the teachers role or school environment to students who fall into special needs.

This project is a learning CD-ROM production aimed at first-time parents. It is using both sound and images, moving as well as non-moving. The purpose of the production is to be an interesting alternative to traditional books. We have been looking at similar productions like drivers license educational CD-ROMs and encyclopedias for inspiration and ideas on how to proceed. In order to give the content some dynamics, we've also added the element of 3D-animated sequences.

This study concerns mapping and analysing two different Supply Chains at Setra Group. Setra Group is Sweden?s biggest producer of solid wood and is primarily owned by Sveaskog, Mellanskog and LRF. The Company consist of twelve sawmills, five planning mills and an organisation for distribution of building material. This study maps one chain for Swedish Glulam standard beam and one chain for solid pine flooring on export to Japan. The glulam chain is based on spruce as raw material and includes all actors between sawmill and the Swedish building material retailers.

In this Bachelor?s essay we discuss whether eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) is perceived as advertisement or as normal information, which is not influenced by any company, on the platform Facebook. The information which we were interested in is the one spread by normal users, and user?s perception of it. To find our results we have conducted a study in which we have used the method interview, which gives qualitative results.

This master?s thesis studies library teaching at two university libraries, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Södertörn University in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to study views on information literacy, how these views affect teaching practice, and how the teaching of information literacy is connected to, on the one hand, German and Swedish learning culture and, on the other, the local community of practice at the studied university libraries. The theories applied in this paper are learning culture and community of practice as developed in the works of Judith Ricken and Etienne Wenger. The methods that have been used are qualitative, semi-structured interviews that were conducted at both university libraries.It was observed that the teaching practices were highly connected to learning cultures.

This essay deals with the subject of communication through Facebook. In this survey we studied 100 youths from Karlstad and their communication habits and behavior patterns on Facebook. The social network site Facebook has since its start in 2004 made a mark in modern communication. Today in 2010 the site has more than 500 million users. This paper wants to study what happens to other types of communication.

The purpose of this study is to compare the conditions for teaching and learning Sami at primary level in three different types of schools. The study focuses on teachers' views on multilingualism and characteristics of good mother tongue education as well as factors inside and outside school affecting teaching. The classroom environment is also discussed. Six qualitative interviews with practicing teachers in the three school forms were carried out: Sami school, integrated teaching and mother-tongue education. The results showed that the teachers are in favour of multilingualism and feel a responsibility to help more children develop their ability to speak Sami.

Since 1998, the Swedish preschool has its own curriculum and with this the preeschool became the first step of a lifelong learning. The aim of this study was to explore how preschool teachers perceive their work before and after the Swedish curriculum was inserted. A qualitative method was used in this study. Four different in-depth interviews were conducted with preschool teachers, all experienced working at least before 1993. The curriculum theory and curriculum history were used to analyze the empirical data.

Our thesis focus on how retirees perceive Tv4s news casts of economy news where we focused on five different aspects: What is the relationship between the news cast and the viewer and how does the viewer express their understanding of the news cast and the way it is constructed? What are the viewers attitude towards the news content and how do they find the news cast useful for them personally?We choosed retirees as our target group due to their vulnerable economic position in today?s society and TV as an important medium for them due to the digital divide. The study was performed with twelve qualitative interviews and one group interview where six retirees took part.We discovered a big interest for economic news in the target group. The majority had a sympathetic view of the news cast they saw but they also expressed skepticism toward the economy segment and/or news castings. The majority expressed a lack of trust for the journalists and the experts brought in to share observations and make announcements, and the financial business overall.

A group of diseases that affect the dog?s sight is progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) a disease that means that the photoreceptors in the retina of the eye either not develop normally or undergo degeneration and thereby causes vision loss and blindness. The disease affects many different breeds and is inherited. What have been shown is that it is different genes that had become mutated in the different breeds, this conclude that despite similar clinical symptoms, the underlying reason could be different. Also the genes that are mutated in dogs and give rise to diseases also exists in humans.

The aim of the present study was to examine whether there are any differences in the self-estimated degree of anxiety and depression between men and women diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A further  aim was to investigate if there is any association between the severity and duration of the disease and the level of anxiety and depression. A descriptive quantitative study was conducted. Data was collected by using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), a self-assessment of anxiety and depression. Data was collected at follow-up visit with COPD-nurse in primary health care in Uppsala during weeks 6-12 in 2011.