The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

During the last 50 years the production of milk per cow has increased. This has, however, been followed by a decreased reproductive performance. Shorter and more indistinct signs of oestrus make it harder for the Swedish farmers to discover when the cows are in oestrus. There is a need for ways to control reproduction. The use of pheromones could possibly provide means to satisfy this need.

In this study, I have examined the previous Social Democratic government?s communication with the voters, focusing on its promises during election campaigns, and the presentation of achieved results. The theories used are the mandate- and sanction theory; the first focuses on voters comparing manifestos to find the most agreeable, whilst the latter concentrates on voters evaluation the work of the previous government, to either discharge or support it. For the sanction theory to work, voters must have the necessary information to evaluate the government in progress. The question is; did the previous government provide the voters with such information?This has been done through scrutinizing the Social Democrats? election manifestos that was used between 1994 and 2006, to examine what the party promised to achieve in economics and the labor market.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how psychosocial support for families where a parent suffers from a life threatening illness can be constructed. The intent was also to explore how the child's perspective is protected and what barriers and opportunities there are for family oriented support. The study has a qualitative approach and includes interviews with four social workers. The interviews were analyzed with a systems theory and attachment theory. The conclusions are that the whole family suffers psychological and social pressures when a parent is sick.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the importance of public libraries for individuals in their everyday life and to study the differences in views between the individuals. Questions posed in this study are: What do public libraries mean to individuals? Which differences between individuals views of the public library are to be found? What is the reason for differences to occur? The analysis is based upon qualitative interviews with six persons, four women and two men between 31 and 55 years of age. The theoretical starting points are Anderson and Skot-Hansens theory of four different roles of public libraries and Bourdieus theory of lifestyle. The study acts on a hermeneutic attitude.

The study examines conceptions of identity among girls with foreign background. The aim was to study how identity is understood by the girls based on ethnicity, images of the origin, the value of gender and the meaning of the family. The theoretical approach was post-colonial theory based on Stuart Hall in combination with gender theory by Yvonne Hirdman. The study was conducted using qualitative individual interviews of open character with six girls. They were aged 17-18 years old and were born in Sweden or had lived here since the age of six.

This essay examines the visual art of Helena Blomqvist with theory of performativity from Judith Butler among others, with a focus on the potential of visual art to question and dislocate norms. It consists of an analysis of three works of art from three aspects: the work of art, the viewer and the situation, and eventuates in an analysis of how the works relate to representation and norms. The construction of the works is related to Butler's theory of identity construction..

The purpose of this paper is to fill the gaps in current research on trade shows. The business-to-consumer aspect has been greatly ignored by academic theorists. We are aiming to make an exploratory study into during-show promotion practices. We will also create a continuation of the Hansen (1999) framework. In order to analyze "during-show promotion" two business-to-consumer trade shows; the ITB in Berlin and EuroHorse in Göteborg were visited.

Traditionally risk-based measures have been used to assess animal welfare in legislation and certification schemes. With increased knowledge and research, debate today tends to focus on and advocate the use of animal-based measures. However this is not a panacea for welfare and the most sound conclusion should be that assessment of animal welfare needs both. The aim of this thesis is to identify the points that need to be taken into consideration to find the optimal balance in the use of input and outcome measures according to the aim of the assessment and how these should be applied when designing a certification scheme? To answer this, a comparison of the use of resource-based, management-based and animal-based measures in two certification schemes for dairy cow welfare, Freedom Food (UK) and Svenskt Sigill (SWE), was made.

In this paper the effect of capital structure on profitability has been investigated among Swedish companies. The essay intends to examine how the relationship between debt and profitability appear among Swedish companies and if the relationship differs between industries. The purpose is to find out how debt affects the profitability of Swedish companies.A quantitative approach has been applied. The selection was made among companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, which resulted in a sample of 207 companies. Several regression analyzes has been formed, based on the independent variable debt-ratio and the dependent variables profit margin, pre-tax profit margin, operating margin, return on assets and return on equity.

In today?s fashion market there are a great number of actors that offer a huge selection ofproducts. The fashion world today covers the whole world and a result of this, the competitionamong fashion companies are enormous, leading to a tough climate for companies in today?sfashion industry. There is an overproduction of goods on the market and companies mustcompete for customers because of today's homogeneous goods and prices.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how socialworkers describe their attitudes towards reporting childabuse to the police and if they make different decisions when they believe the violence to be honour related and how they handle these questions. The main questions are; How does socialworkers describe their and their colleagues attitudes towards reporting childabuse to the police and when do they believe they should report? Do they describe honourviolence as a specific kind of violence that should be lifted and in what way does it affect their work? The study is written from a legal sociologist perspective with a qualitative approach. Four socialworkers were interviewed and the interviews were analyzed with an anti-racist theory and with the theory about freedom of action.The conclusions is that the socialworkers mostly report childabuse to the police when the violence is physical. This means that children who describes to be subjected to psychological violence, including honourviolence, has poor legal security.

This thesis presents the implementation of a knowledge base system for rough sets [Paw92]within the logic programming framework. The combination of rough set theory with logic programming is a novel approach. The presented implementation serves as a prototype system for the ideas presented in [VDM03a, VDM03b]. The system is available at "http://www.ida.liu.se/rkbs". The presented language for describing knowledge in the rough knowledge base caters for implicit definition of rough sets by combining different regions (e.g.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how three Swedish news publications writes about integration and immigrants. The news articles were analyzed with a rhetorical analysis. The method was supplemented with theories of media and ethnicity, agenda setting theory and gatekeeping theory. This study resulted in the conclusion that racist discourses are found in the three news publications, regardless of political color, writer or article genre. Many of the articles makes a clear division of "us and them", where "them" is defined by the text's "us", who are often Swedes.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka hur genus - vårt socialt skapade kön skapas i en musikpedagogisk verksamhet. Finns det någon skillnad mellan pojkar och flickors intresse i ämnet musik, val av instrument eller agerande i undervisningen? Hur bemöter eleverna varandra, hur bemöter läraren eleverna och tvärtom ur ett genusperspektiv? Studien utfördes på en grundskola i klasserna sju och nio med hjälp av observationsmetoden och videokamera. Resultaten visade på skillnad mellan könen genom att pojkarna generellt dominerade musiklektionen genom att prata, bråka och ta mer uppmärksamhet än flickorna. Undervisningens innehåll och lektionstid blev kraftigt negativt påverkad då lärarens uppmärksamhet riktades åt pojkarnas bråk.