This paper investigates the autobiography of Damien Echols. The autobiographical subject, Echols, depicts his life as a marginalized youth during the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties in Arkansas, USA. It also explores the years that Echols spent on Death Row after having been arrested along with two other youths for the murder of three eight-year-old boys; a crime all three of the accused denied having committed. In 2011, after eighteen years of incarceration, the three now grown up men were released from prison. The author of this paper discusses biography and especially autobiography as a genre and explores to what extent memories represent the actual life the autobiographical subject, Echols, has lived and if memories are or can be truthful.

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine how the sexuality of young people with intellectual disability (ID) are constructed, based on how school counselors describe the situatuation of these youths and based on how the counselors describe their role in giving advice and discussing sex and relationships. The empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviewes with seven scool counselors and one consultant. The material was analyzed on the basis of theories about sexual script, stigma and social constructivism. The results showed that school counselors saw the young people with ID as a vulnerable group and as a group worthy of protection. Most of them had a picture of young girls as more vulnerable than young boys.

Introduktion: Världshälsoorganisationen har introducerat begreppet ?youth friendly Health services? vilket beskriver att unga vuxna har ett särskilt behov av att bli lyssnade på och få hjälp med sina problem. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att ta reda på unga vuxna patienters upplevelser av att vara delaktiga och medverka i vård och behandling. Metod: Empirisk studie med kvalitativ kunskaps- och forskningsansats. Resultat: Informanterna uppger att de har stöd och tilltro till egen förmåga genom olika stödsystem som personer, funktioner och IT-support.

AbstractIn Östhammar a change has been noticed in the statistics regarding incoming reports, appraisals and investigations concerning a suspicion that a child or youth may be harmed.There are some earlier reaserch made concerning the sorting process that takes place when a report is made. In Östhammar the social workers have been interested in finding out what the main reasons are for not opening an investigation. It has also been some research from the ?sociology of childhood perspective? on how childhood is being constructed and how children are positioned in the investigative texts. From a social constructionist perspective and by using both a quantitative and a qualitative research, I have examined all the reports that have not led to an investigation from the first quarter of 2011 in Östhammar. This to find out the main explanations for not investigating and how children are positioned in such appraisals.It has been shown that most appraisals closed either because of the situation which led to the declaration no longer exists, to another input already exists, the problem is not seen as  serious or that it was felt that the parents are capable of giving the support they need. I have discovered that the childs voice is missing in most of the report investigations. I have not found any explanations to why one has chosen not to speak with the child, but there may be explanations such as limited time, limited knowledge or a will to spare the child the discomfort..

The purpose of this study is to describe how, and if, discourses about self-harm in young people has been changed from the late 90-s until today. We chose to do this by studying films where the content of self-harm is a big factor. The study is built on a narrative research, we did however analyze it as a discourse method. The issues we have concentrated on are: Is there a significant quality that describes an individual who cut themselves? How can this phenomenon be seen from a gender point of view? Is there a specific group of people who is labeled as a person who cut themselves from the public? The result from this study show us that self-injury, from symptoms of a (bad) mental state, is a strong discourse where the views from the society lets it become more acceptable.

Ungdomsarbetslösheten är ett problem i Sverige och det finns flera unga som uppbär försörjningsstöd. Det har visat sig vara svårt för en del ungdomar att etablera sig på arbetsmarknaden och kommunerna har ett ansvar för skapa arbetsmarknadsåtgärder som kan hjälpa personer att komma ut i arbetslivet. En del unga är mer utsatta än andra vilket gör att de kan vara i behov av ett intensivare stöd. Denna studies syfte är att undersöka vilka komponenter eller händelser i Case management-projektet som haft inverkan för de unga vuxnas livssituation. Projektet som är en arbetsmarknadsåtgärd syftar till att hjälpa ungdomar som har svårigheter med att strukturera upp sin vardag.

Klamydia ökar bland ungdomar och unga vuxna i Sverige. Eftersom infektionen ofta är asymptomatisk och kan leda till infertilitet är det viktigt att de som utsatts för smitta testar sig. Även ett ökat utövande av säkrare sex är viktigt för att stoppa utvecklingen. En litteraturstudie har gjorts för att kartlägga preventionsinsatser som görs inom området sexuell hälsa och ta reda på hur ungdomar och unga vuxna ser på sexualitet, sexuellt riskbeteende och säkrare sex. Nio vetenskapliga artiklar användes för att få en bild av ungdomskultur och sexualitet.

Abstract The Act of Education outlines that good quality in schools and preschools, focusing on continuous improvement, promote children?s learning and this in turn is on of the most important factors for child and youth welfare.This thesis was based on the authors´ pre-understanding that there are opportunities to improvement in the quality of preschools. The focus was on studying how analyses can provide a base for quality work, and the purpose of this study was to identify and describe the analytical methods that can be used in the process of continual improvement for quality development in preschools.A qualitative study was conducted in two preschools that have received quality awards. It was conducted through interviews with the preschool principals and through studies of various documents.In the comparative analysis of theory and empirical data, it was made clear that there was a regular analysing process going on at the investigated preschools and an emphasize of reflection could also be identified. Keywords: Quality development, preschool, analytical methods, processes, reflection .

This essay examines how a group of five youths? self identities are affected by unemploy-ment, contact with the social services and by labour market interventions. In Sweden youth employment has been regarded as a social problem. Arbetslinjen that could be translated into the work model or the work line influences and is a necessity for the Swedish welfare system. With a hermeneutic scientific philosophical position the method used to examine this has been to interview the youths, in the age of 18-25, individually.

The purpose of the study was to inquire into pupils? attitude towards the current beauty ideal from a gender- and an ethnicity perspective. The study was based on a quantitative survey among 116 young students about prevailing beauty ideal from two different schools in the Stockholm area. The result showed that the students are partially characterized by the stereotyped images of women and men but that there are tendencies towards another view especially among the girls. It is however clear that appearance still is important.

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 reflects on the thoughts and experiences of social workers in child protection agencies when it comes to talking about sexuality with teenagers, age 13-20, who is being subjected to inquiry. The research is qualitative and based on five semi-structured interviews. It has a phenomenological position and has been analyzed hermeneutically through cognitive and gender theory. Previous research shows that youths who get in contact with child protection often have issues about their sexuality. This study show that social workers in the agencies lack knowledge about this issue and that they seldom talks about it with the teenagers or their own colleagues.

Today's young people find themselves in an intense media traffic where many messages have a commercial nature. Some such messages are for example different types of advertising in various media and advertising often plays on the uncertainty that may be common in adoles-cence. New interactive media like blogs on the Internet has been established in recent years. Mixed types of media content, advertising with different messages, appear in blogs. Therefore, I am interested in how blogs on the Internet can influence young people's creation of their identity.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine seven public librarians? attitudes towards manga as a new kind of literature in public libraries. Manga is an art form, originally from Japan, but in recent years manga has become very popular in the Western societies. The main issue of this thesis is how the librarians? look at manga and what they think about manga.

Why participate? Many studies focus on explaning non-participation in politics. The political parties are loosing members and the particiaption of young people are given extra attention. This thesis is about young people who do participate in party politics. The question is how they experience their participation and how they feel that they can have a politcal influence by being a member of the youth section of a political party.