The aim of this study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate an instrument for measuring the impact from chronic pain on daily life. Traditionally psychometric evaluation is done with parametric methods even if the items are ordinal data. In this study the instrument to be developed is solely based on ordinal data, and the psychometrically evaluation is done with both traditional methods (i.e. parametric statistics) as well as with non-parametric methods. These two different ways of psychometrically evaluation are then compared with each other.

År 2010 verkställdes det politiska beslutet om att låta värnplikten vila och satsa på ett anställt försvar och istället infördes frivillig militär utbildning i form av Grundläggande militär utbildning. Regeringen anser att ungdomsverksamheterna, vilka bedrivs av frivilligorganisationer som exempelvis Sjövärnskåren, är en viktig del i rekryteringen till Försvarsmakten.Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta reda på om Sjövärnskåren skapar attraktionskraft för Försvarsmakten och i vilken utsträckning det motiverar ungdomar till att söka vidare till GMU och den nu vilande värnplikten.Denna uppsats baseras på en kvantitativ metod i form av ett frågeformulär, baserat på Herzbergs tvåfaktorsteori samt Hackman och Oldhams modell. Enkäten gick ut till 47 personer med bakgrund i Sjövärnskåren och som påbörjat Grundläggande militär utbildning, Specialistofficersutbildningen eller Officersprogrammet mellan åren 2010 och 2013.Enligt denna undersökning har Sjövärnskåren gjort Försvarsmakten attraktiv för ungdomarna som gått på sommarskolorna. Framförallt har detta skett genom att befälen på sommarskolorna föregått med bra exempel som ledare och representanter för Försvarsmakten.En slutsats som har dragits är att Sjövärnskåren nog kan anses som en bra rekryteringsgrund där det militära livet får testas på och utvärderas, samt leder till motiverade och engagerade rekryter..

The way we socialize today is radically different from how it was only twenty years ago. Since the arrival of the Internet more and more of what we know about the lives of our friends comes from text-based social networks, or blogs. This means that we all, more or less, have become authors of our own life stories and that the reality we live in have become fictionalized. In this paper I explore what effects this postmodern process of dissolving boundaries has had on the autobiographical genre, where the line between fiction and reality is traditionally stressed. By analysing Carina Rydberg?s (b.

This Master thesis has been carried out at Scania CV AB in Södertälje, in collaboration withKTH, The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. The focus of this Master thesis isSetBased Concurrent Engineering(SBCE), with the purpose of answering the questions: what isSBCE, how does it work, and for what purposes is it applied.It was early established thatSBCE is often included as a part of Lean product development,which in its turn is often related to Toyota?s way of working. TheSBCE method includesworking with multiple solutions in parallel, eliminating weak alternatives throughout thewhole process. In opposite to a conventional product development process, where it iscommon one at an early stage tries to identify and choose the most promising alternative.Despite the appearance ofSBCE as a resource consuming method, figures from Toyotaindicates the opposite, thatSBCE is in fact a very effective way of working compared to othermore traditional methods.The process of this Master thesis was divided into three phases.

This master thesis concerns the occupational safetyenvironment at Outokompu Stainless, Avesta Work.The study is of a sociotechnical approach wherehumans are involved and interconnected in the samesystem with technology and organisation. In order toreach the corporation?s goal of zero accidents with losttime injury, the work of improving and maintainoccupational safety and health has to regard behaviourand cultural aspects. The aim of this study is todescribe the safety culture at a specific production unitand research what work which has to be done in orderto change and improve the safety culture at AvestaWork.There are several opportunities for improvementpointed out in this paper and here are some mainresults presented. First and foremost, the concern ofsafety among blue-collar is often secondary due toproduction.

Gender equality and gender equality work is relevant for today's working life, and previously male-dominated occupations may be increasingly under pressure to become more equal. This paper aims to explore and understand how the firefighters at a station are experiencing gender and gender equality in rescue services.Using theories of how sex is done, how a power perspective and a structural approach can show men's and women's different conditions in an organization, and theories that are more specific to gender and change management the firefighters talk about gender and gender equality are analyzed. Essay results were collected through interviews with seven firefighters and then analyzed and interpreted with the help of theories.The analysis shows that there is a perception among the firefighters that men and women are biologically different and that required physical strength legitimizes the exclusion of women. Inequality is seen as something natural and by pursuing an active gender equality women are given unwarranted benefits. When physical strength becomes a legitimate reason for exclusion, the responsibility for gender inequality is put on women and that women don?t have what it takes.There is also a resistance against gender equality analyzed in the paper, and it's stated opposition seems to be directed against the management's way of recruiting women.

Counterinsurgency (COIN) has made a comeback during the early 21-century since the majority of western countries have been involved in peace enforcement in the middle-east. Since its comeback the concept of COIN have been wildly debated but also undergone some chances since its early days, today the majority of COIN theories claims that the local population is the key to winning a COIN campaign. If you gain their trust the insurgency will lose their support and recruiting base, this is the reason why collateral damage resulting in in civilian deaths are contra-productive, it creates more insurgents. This is the incitement to further examine how civilian deaths occur and can be avoided during COIN campaigns. This essay studies the American COIN campaign in Iraq between 2004 and 2009 and aims to investigate whether there is a trilemma-like relationship between the key goals of COIN: protecting civilians, protecting one?s own forces and neutralizing the enemy.

This paper aims to discover if the customers meeting with a company?s website can be described through theories derived from both web usability and theories concerning physical meetings between customers and salespersons in a traditional way. The conducted research involves five interviews as well as participating observations witch where analyzed with a hermeneutical approach. The most prominent results are that the web based customer meeting can be described through both of the theoretical perspectives witch results in a broader and more colorful portrayal of the individuals encounter with a commercial website..

The purpose with this paper is that trough a description of the management control at Jitech AB find out if traditional management control have been abandoned for benefit for modern management control and in which extent the transition have happened. Further is the second purpose with this paper to find out which decisions that lies behind the design of the management control and how these are in opposition to with the theory..

An increased use of social media has enabled a new arena for HR functions and the work with HR issues. Proponents are critical of this, as it can lead to ethical and legal dilemmas. So far the research on this area is limited. On this basis I found it interesting to study how social media is used in connection with the recruitment process. Those who will benefit from this study are primarily those dealing with recruitment, but also others working with HR issues.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the female author, Charlotte Brontë, describes the development of her female protagonist in Jane Eyre and to compare this to how the male author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, describes the development of his male protagonist in Crime and Punishment, inside the patriarchal 19th century.My basic idea is that both characters in these two books have to reach their own unknown to find satisfaction and a new existence, and I want to investigate what the characters have to go through to find that existence. To help me in my exploration of Jane Eyre I make use of Gilbert and Gubars? book The Madwoman in the Attic and in the case of Crime and Punishment, I make use of Pelikan Straus? article ??Why did I say ?Women!??? Raskolnikov Reimagined?. Both authors discuss literature from a gender perspective, but without comparing female and male characters or authors with each other, which I believe is important for a more holistic understanding of gender issue.The conclusion of this essay is that these books are describing the main characters? evolution towards their personal unknown with the same tools, a double self, an important symbol, and in the end a love partner that embodies that unknown.

The aim of this study is to enlighten how todays working environment affects young individuals descriptions of how to reach success in work life, now often titled as ?career?. Our purpose has been to analyse how the term career is constituted discursively among young people in jobs characterized by flexibility. The study is based on six qualitative interviews with young adults in the media industry, all between 20-30 years old. By utilising a Foucaultdian discourse analysis we want to expose how the competing and dominating discourses, that our interviewees? statements are based on, can be associated with a wider social context.  The study reveals that our interviewees describe career in two separate ways, both positively and negatively.

AbstractThis bachelor thesis has been assigned by the company ACG Nyström, Borås. ACG Nyström is working in cooperation with a Swiss company named Jentschmann AG. Jentschmann is a manufacturer of ultra sonic welding machines which ACG Nyström is marketing in Scandinavia and the Baltic States. On behalf of Jentschmann AG the company has the aim to introduce the ultra sonic welding technique to new companies.The aim of this thesis is to compare traditional sewing machines with ultra sonic welding machines within two textile areas, protective clothing and outdoor living.Two investigative questions have been formulated for this purpose: what are the differences between a sewing machine and an ultra sonic welding machine? Is it possible to replace the sewing technology with ultra sonic welding? These stand as guidance for this paper.To gather knowledge interviews, literature studies, and tests on two different ultra sonic welding machines were performed.

A uniform environmental rating system for green buildings is demanded in today's society, where the requirements of the energy consumption for real estate are increasing. There are several different systems around the world used to rate buildings, all with different assessment criteria and starting points, which make it difficult to compare environmental rated buildings with each other.The purpose of this paper is to acquire knowledge about the differences between the Swedish environmental rating system Miljöklassad Byggnad and the American LEED, to discover which system is most advantageous. We also examine whether environmental rating affect the value of a property.Miljöklassad Byggnad is relatively simple structured, which makes it possible for private individuals to rate their property. LEED is better structured on the other hand in the case of environmental classification of commercial properties, because there are manuals for among others hospitals, schools and retail. The rating system for Miljöklassad Byggnad is good since the system seeks to fix the number of errors and deficiencies as soon as possible.

After the two big hurricanes called ?Gudrun? (2005) and ?Per? (2007) in the south of Sweden, some landowners planted Douglas fir instead of the traditional Norway spruce and Scots pine. They did it for different reasons. Some of them spreading their "risk", others because they wanted better growth or to obtain a more storm-resistant stand and trees more protected against rot. In this study, survival and growth were examined on Douglas fir in 21 different locations, owned by private landowners in southern Sweden.