Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Business Administration

Negotiations between teams are pervasive. Whereas the presence of a team can help to create value and promote win-win outcomes, deals reached by negotiating teams often fall short of reaching their full potential due to competition between teams. Building upon insights from group dynamics and intergroup psychology, the current dissertation seeks to examine how team composition can promote high-quality outcomes in an inter-team negotiation context. Specifically, I examine how a contrast effect created by within-team role differentiation (i.e., the good-cop/bad-cop role differentiation strategy) can influence both how value is created and claimed in the negotiation. Results from three interactive team-on-team negotiation experiments support the expectation that greater value is created (i.e., more joint gain) when one team uses the good-cop/bad-cop strategy. However, results also show that the good-cop/bad-cop team also claims more of the value created as compared to the other team. Together, these results help advance our understanding of how team structure can affect negotiation processes and outcomes when teams negotiate.

Committee: Robert Lount (Advisor); Timothy Judge (Committee Member); Bennett Tepper (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, EDU Teaching and Learning

In a globalized word, English has become the primary means of communication in language contact zone (Pratt, 1991; Thomason, 2001) where people of diverse socioeconomic and cultural background interact with each other. Under a monolingual paradigm, non-native English speakers have been denied the use of linguistic and paralinguistic resources from their L1. Translingual Practice (Canagarajah, 2013c) contests this paradigm and gives agency to English learners in postcolonial regions by not dichotomizing native and non-native speakers, but treating them all as translinguals who are engaged in shaping English norms. During this interaction, translinguals deploy their negotiation strategies not only for meaning negotiation but also language identity development (Ellis, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2009). This research was conducted in the context of an intensive English program in Gorontalo, a relatively new province in Indonesia where the presence of English native speakers is not prominent. The language contact zone was expected to encourage the participants' (American volunteer teachers and Indonesian students) to deploy their translingual negotiation strategies in their oral communication. The first research question aims to enact those negotiation strategies which happened in personal, social, contextual and textual spheres. The second research purpose, which is highly related to the first research question, is how the enactment shapes their translingual identities. However, the spacio-temporal aspect of the enactment was expanded by reflecting beyond the intensive English program. This qualitative inquiry was conducted through multiple data collection procedures; e.g. collecting participants' demographic data, pre- and post questionnaires, interviewing, stimulated recall protocol, observation, journal writing and autoethnographical writing. The analysis of translingual negotiation strategies follows Canagarajah's (2013c) framework of integrated analysis wh (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Keiko Samimy (Advisor); Adrian Rodgers (Advisor); Alan Hirvela (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Surrogacy has been a highly contested practice for several decades, with many critics expressing concern for surrogates' loss of bodily autonomy. Although the number of surrogacy arrangements continue to rise in the United States, empirical research that explores surrogates' and intended parents' expectations for, negotiation, and experiences of control and autonomy over medical decisions made throughout surrogacy process is lacking. To fill this gap in U.S.-based surrogacy research, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with eighteen surrogates and fifteen intended parents. Of the 18 surrogates, 17 were female and one was a trans male. Of the 15 intended parents, seven were female, seven were male, and one identified as transfeminine. I utilized Neiterman's (2012) concept of “doing pregnancy” to explore decisions around embryo transfers, abortion, pregnancy care, and childbirth—different phases of what I call “doing surrogacy.” I found that a clear division of control between “baby-based” and “surrogate-based” decisions were not always easily determined due to the blurred line between surrogates' bodily autonomy and intended parents' right to control the health of their child. As a result, surrogates sometimes experienced a loss of bodily autonomy when the interests of intended parents became paramount during the arrangement. Many times, however, surrogates were able to assert control over their bodies during surrogacy, a reality often supported by intended parents. This was especially true during the pregnancy phase, when surrogates were able to utilize their embodied knowledge of pregnancy to elicit trust from intended parents in terms of their decisions about pregnancy care. There were also times during the surrogacy process that intended parents chose to forgo their own interests to support their surrogate's autonomy or to protect their surrogate's health.

Committee: Clare Stacey (Committee Chair); Susan Roxburgh (Committee Member); Tiffany Taylor (Committee Member); Deborah Barnbaum (Committee Member); Mary Himmelstein (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1975, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Arts and Sciences: Communication

As more women become exposed to educational and technological tools, alongside international and intercultural affiliations, African women are increasingly deviating from the proscribed societal roles. Through this, we witness the rise of fresh sociocultural perspectives that often create and influence identity formation and reformation. This thesis explores the experiences of Nigerian female entrepreneurs who take on the dualized roles of financial providers and homemakers. To understand this phenomenon, this study employs the theoretical linings of the feminist standpoint theory, nego-feminism model, and the communication theory of identity (CTI). The study specifically investigates how the increase in financial contribution impacts the role negotiation of these women while examining how they negotiate and communicate their identities and boundaries. For this study, a total of 12 women were interviewed. The findings from this research show a strong societal and social influence on participants' perceptions of themselves and their identities as women and financial contributors.

Committee: Omotayo Banjo Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nancy Jennings Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ronald Jackson II Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Kinesiology

Campus recreation plays an important role on today's college and university campuses. Student involvement and engagement with campus recreation has multiple benefits to students extending beyond physical activity, such as students persisting at their college or university at a higher rate (Forrester et al., 2018), having a higher GPA (Belch et al., 2001; Brock et al., 2015; Mayers et al., 2017), and experiencing increased feelings of well-being (Shellman & Hill, 2017). However, college and university students face a variety of constraints to leisure participation and utilize numerous constraint negotiation strategies to be able to participate in campus recreation. Using the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) (Funk & James, 2001; 2006), this study aimed to understand how involved students are with their campus recreation department, and how that involvement is related to the leisure constraints faced and leisure constraint negotiation strategies used. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted and found no significant difference in leisure constraints experienced based on the different stages of the PCM. A second MANOVA was conducted and found significant differences in the leisure constraint negotiation strategies utilized by students. Significant differences were found in all six categories of leisure constraint negotiation strategies: time management, skill acquisition, interpersonal relation, financial management, physical fitness, and intrapersonal validation. The majority of the differences were between the awareness and allegiance stages of the PCM.

Committee: Donna Pastore (Advisor); Leeann Lower-Hoppe (Committee Member); Brian Turner (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education; Sports Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, City and Regional Planning

In the past two decades, a group of prominent foundations has shifted their grantmaking from supporting social services toward directly engaging in urban development, leading significant planning and implementation processes largely outside of formal governmental structures and processes. Despite the prominence of this grantmaking and emerging interests in the urban studies and planning scholarship, systematic research on the changing forms and extent of foundations' engagement in urban development is scarce. In this three-essay dissertation, I investigate why and how prominent foundations increasingly pursue their own visions for the future of cities by directly engaging in urban development. I also tease out the implications for incorporating diverse interests in the planning and implementation of foundation-backed development schemes. In the first essay, I identify six distinctive community and economic development (CED) grantmaking patterns among large place-oriented foundations by integrating statistical and qualitative analyses. I further demonstrate that CED grantmaking by place-oriented foundations is primarily driven by organizational interests, particularly those of senior leaders and board members while being constrained by foundations' missions and the makeup of their donors. In the second essay, I investigate an attempt to implement a model of urban development based on a highly transactional view of urban development—“Capital Innovation” model—by a network of high-profile national foundations. By looking into tensions around knowledge of investment capital, scale, and representation in decision-making, I uncover challenges and conflicts around the implementation of a national model of urban development that prioritizes capital investment and financial expertise in a particular historical and institutional context. In the third essay, I analyze two prominent foundations that shifted their engagement in urban development in response to comparable socioec (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mattijs van Maasakkers (Advisor); Edward (Ned) Hill (Committee Member); Bernadette Hanlon (Committee Member) Subjects: Organizational Behavior; Public Policy; Urban Planning

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2023, Educational Administration

Within the context of white-dominant workplaces, research shows that Black women experience various levels of visibility ranging from invisibility to hypervisibility. These variances often cause them to result in utilizing them as tactics to negotiate their identities to fit the organization's needs. This research explores this negotiation and the costs, benefits, and sacrifices that occur when Black women participate in identity negotiation. By analyzing their lived experiences through the use of critical participatory action research along with a critical phenomenology approach, this research frames the intersection between visibility, whiteness, and the impacts of experiencing a culture that promotes the need for Black women to give up pieces of themselves at the expense of their agency and authenticity.

Committee: Corinne Brion, Ph.D (Advisor); Edith Gnanadass, Ph.D (Committee Member); Pamela Young, Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; Organization Theory; Womens Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Arts and Sciences: History

“Cities in Crisis” explores the experience of war in two Brandenburg cities during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). As a conflict of tremendous scope and violence, the Thirty Years' War presented substantial challenges for local and regional governments to navigate. For Altstadt and Neustadt Brandenburg, it brought violence, economic and demographic decline, and general instability. This project considers how the city governments and ordinary citizens within these communities navigated the complex circumstances of the war and found ways to endure. Drawing on hundreds of letters and reports to the central government, “Cities in Crisis” maps out the dynamics of cooperation and competition within and between the cities as petitioners relied on the rhetoric of equity and justice to pursue relief from the burdens of war. This study enriches the scholarship on war-time experience, agency, and political culture in Brandenburg through an analysis of the language of petitions and supplications from Altstadt and Neustadt. The mountain of correspondence from city leaders and ordinary citizens bore witness to the scale of ruin that threatened to swamp their communities. While there were often few practical options for resisting the tide of war, the endurance of the two cities—embodied in their persistent letter-writing—offers a strong demonstration of the importance of civilian agency in wartime. The language of equity and justice pervaded the cities' appeals as the cities collaborated and competed for relief. Over time, the demographic declines for both Altstadt and Neustadt encouraged autonomous action where early-war cooperation between the cities had been the norm. Within the community, individual petitioners mirrored the rhetoric of city councils as they contested the apportionment of increasing financial burdens of war and pursued financial restitution for military abuses. As a study of urban, war-time agency, this project provides necessary detail to th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sigrun Haude Ph.D. (Committee Member); Willard Sunderland Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mary Lindemann Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Haug Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: History

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Health Education

Study One Background: This study sought to validate a new sexual assertiveness scale with college students in the United States. Sexual assertiveness is associated with safer sex and sexual satisfaction. Validating the new scale among students in the US is important, as sexual behaviors vary by country. Study design: College students at a Midwest university completed an electronic survey that contained the sexual assertiveness scale questions, as well as items measuring sexual behaviors. Data analysis compared the current results to the previous study. Results: Reliability analysis shows the scale is reliable for a US college student sample. Confirmatory factor analysis did not show a good model fit; convergent validity showed some statistically significant correlations. Sexual behaviors of the sample are discussed. Discussion: The CFA results could be due to sample characteristics: the sample was older and in committed relationships, which could impact sexual assertiveness behaviors. The study should be replicated with a larger sample size that more closely resembles traditional college student characteristics. Respondents' sexual behaviors highlight the need for sexual health education. Conclusion: Sexual assertiveness is an important part of sexual health and can increase safer sex behaviors. More research should be done to understand sexual assertiveness among US college students. Health educators should incorporate sexual assertiveness skills in their sex education. Study Two Background: Sexual pleasure, sexual assertiveness, and condom negotiation are important parts of sexual health and safer sex. It is necessary to understand the relationship between these concepts in order to improve and educate about sexual health. Study design: College students at a university in the Midwest received an electronic survey with questions related to sexual behaviors, condom negotiation, and sexual assertiveness. Two existing scales on condom negotiation and sexual asser (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Liliana Rojas-Guyler Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Laura Nabors (Committee Member); Amy Bernard Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Health Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Communication Studies

Within the United States, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking from an intimate partner (CDC, 2018). Intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with poor health, substance abuse, depression, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Additionally, the post-IPV period is linked with depressive disorders resulting in diminished self-esteem, lower levels of perceived social support, and reduced quality of life. There is a growing interest in understanding how post-IPV individuals recover from violent relationships and maintain non-violent romantic relationships. Although these studies highlight the complex and multidimensional ways in which post-IPV recovery occurs, the role of communication in the post-IPV recovery process and romantic relational meaning-making has yet to be explored. Therefore, Hecht's (1993) communication theory of identity (CTI) was used as a sensitizing framework for this dissertation. To accomplish these research goals, I employed a qualitative approach, utilizing Charmaz's (2014) grounded theory to conduct intensive co-constructed in-depth interviews with 22 post-IPV adults and were not currently in violent relationships. This dissertation identified several new understandings of post-IPV identity construction, management, and communication. In analyzing the personal, enacted, relational, and communal layers of post-IPV identities, this dissertation discovered particularly noteworthy findings. These include how IPV trauma can result in identity veils and four identity gaps, which emerged both during IPV perpetration and the post-IPV recovery process. These identity gaps included personal-personal, personal-enacted-relational, personal-relational, and personal-communal. Understanding how these gaps inhibited participants from fully communicating their post-IPV identities, this study explored how these gaps can be negotiated. Findings also include four essential elements to post-IPV roman (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa Hanasono Ph.D. (Advisor); Sandra Faulkner Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lengel Lara Ph.D. (Committee Member); Laura Landry-Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2021, Anthropology

The processes of globalization — characterized by global flows of people, technologies, capital, images, and information that shape people's imagined worlds — continue to spur the growth of megacities and the concomitant health dilemmas therein. As globalization shapes both the practice and the idea of medicine and healthscapes, this transformation is translated into shifting desires, expectations, and identities for both physicians and patients in the clinical encounter — the focal points of this study. This dissertation project utilizes an ethnographic design (semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and archival research) over a 19-month period in Mumbai, India to examine the following question: How does the clinical encounter unfold in relation to the doctor-patient interaction to construct expectations? This study takes the following two premises: 1) A thick ethnographic description of the clinical encounter is fundamentally linked to the bi-directional shaping of local, global and micro, macro ideologies. 2) Biomedicine (its practitioners, its seekers, its associated clinical encounters, and its institutions) is a prominent focal point on which the concepts of identity and globalization pivot in Indian society. Therefore, this study of the doctor-patient interaction is framed to serve as a microscopic observation of macroscopic globalization forces. I interviewed physicians and patients and observed their clinical interactions at 3 Obstetrics/Gynecology clinical sites in Mumbai: a private clinic, a semi-private hospital, and a municipal hospital. Based on data collected from 603 participants, the most pertinent aspects of identity in the micro-level clinical encounter in Mumbai involve the following: age, gender, sex, social status, educational level, language, profession, ethnicity, and lifeworlds. Additionally, I provide data on how the emerging themes of physician synergy, ritual, medical record, and traditional remedies illustrate salient aspe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Atwood Gaines MA, PhD, MPH (Committee Chair); Jim Shaffer MA, PhD (Committee Member); Janet McGrath MA, PhD (Committee Member); Eileen Anderson-Fye EdMA, EdD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Behavioral Sciences; Communication; Cultural Anthropology; Ecology; Ethics; Ethnic Studies; Families and Family Life; Foreign Language; Gender; Gender Studies; Gynecology; Health; Health Care; Health Care Management; Health Sciences; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Obstetrics; Personal Relationships; Personality; Regional Studies; Social Research; Social Structure; Sociolinguistics; South Asian Studies; Technology; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Communication Studies

This dissertation examines identity negotiation and the relationship between identity and communication. This social scientific study's primary goal is to extend the focus and scope of the communication theory of identity (CTI) by introducing a new theoretical construct within CTI's interpenetration of frames - identity bridges. The interpenetration of frames refers to the conceptualization that the frames are not isolated (Hecht et al., 2003). Instead, the frames operate, interact, and cohabitate simultaneously between and amongst each other. Identity bridges represent the ways that people respond to identity gaps (Kuiper, 2018), which are inconsistencies between individuals' personal, enacted, relational, communal (Jung & Hecht, 2004), and material identities (Kuiper, 2019). Kuiper (2018) posited that identity bridge responses consist of psychological, behavioral, and communicative efforts to negotiate identity gaps. This dissertation aims to develop this assertion further and proposes that there are multiple identity bridges and identify these types. This study's secondary goal is to develop a means to predict identity bridging responses, enabling a foundation to continue studying the multiple and complex facets of identity negotiation. A scale will allow the identification and measurement of identity bridges, and therefore, facilitate the ability to find associations between identity bridging occurrences and other factors. Therefore, this study's third goal is to establish what aspects of identity and identity gaps predict different types of identity bridges. I conducted four separate studies to achieve these goals. To begin, Study One developed an initial item pool through inductive analysis, using open-ended survey responses. Study One yielded 120 items established as responses to identity gaps. Using the generated item pool, studies two and three collected responses for exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the factor struct (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sandra Faulkner PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Laura Stafford PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Margaret Zoller Booth PhD (Other); Lisa Hanasono PhD (Committee Member); Yanqin Lu PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2020, History

The failures of the Scanian War of 1675-1679 revealed to a young Karl XI that Sweden's military was in dire need of reform. This thesis follows the king's process of negotiating with the peasantry over the implementation of one of these new reforms, the knekthall system for recruiting infantry. It argues that Karl XI intentionally used negotiation as an instrument to build a more efficient method of military recruitment and maintenance. That he used negotiation as a tool to adapt to diverse localities and align the requirements of the knekthall system with the real resources of an area. Negotiation legitimized the king's resource extraction even as it provided him with information on the resources of a locality and the peasant's willingness to part with them. Through this alignment the system gained stability, and with that long-term efficiency. Negotiation was not the last recourse of a king not powerful enough to enforce his will, but a tool with unique properties utilized to achieve the state's goals in a manner unattainable with coercion.

Committee: Paul D. Lockhart Ph.D. (Advisor); Kathryn B. Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jonathan R. Winkler Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: European History; History; Military History; Military Studies; Scandinavian Studies

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Sociology

Hip Hop is a global phenomenon. The boundaries of authenticity have shifted and continue to shift allowing more fans from different social backgrounds to join the U.S. multi-racial hip hop fan community. Asian American and Pacific Islander American communities are two of the groups who have become fans and have been conditionally accepted into the US hip hop community. They present an image that is in opposition to the stereotypes of what other hip hop fans learned and and believe about AAPI communities. AAPI fans' race and gender acted as barriers to being seen as authentic hip hop fans. This study explores they ways that AAPI negotiated their racial identities in a community that is historically, socially, and politically tied to Black and Puerto Rican communities in the South Bronx during the 1970s.

Committee: Earl Wright II Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Annulla Linders Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, East Asian Languages and Literatures

What does the Chinese post-90s generation do (and say) in negotiating relationships in today's continuously changing and increasingly complex Chinese cultural scene? To what degree do their practices still follow the established traditional norms and expectations, and to what extent are these practices altered or transformed by the globalization process that they are experiencing? Having a clear, research-based understanding of these questions will have significant impacts on the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language for decades to come. This study researches practices by members of the post-90s generation in their negotiating relationship and networking and it focuses on the stages after making initial contact and before becoming "friends" or "partners". Specifically, it examines and analyses these four types of behaviors/strategies: (1) greeting to create familiarity between acquaintances; (2) extending and responding invitations to create social situations for further interactions; (3) complimenting and responding to compliment to create social assets for desirable engagements; and (4) negotiating differences and reconciling after a misunderstanding to work productively in diverse and dynamic contexts. The data for this study comes from an online questionnaire survey with a total 151 participants from all around China. Participants range in age from 18 to 57 years old. The goal was to gain a diverse age range. Participants filled out an online survey which request them to imagine a number of social situations in which they needed to interact with a new acquaintance. Each social situation contained a task, be it responding to a compliment or extending an invitation. Participants were asked to select either the response that best-described how they would approach the situation. The data reveals many important strategies that Chinese people use in order to interaction and network with their new acquaintances. Some of these strategies represent a ge (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Xiao-Bin Jian (Advisor); Majorie K M Chan (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Media and Communication

Utilizing the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), this qualitative study explores the metaperceptions and identity negotiation strategies of immigrants from the so-called Middle East (and North Africa) region. The study encompasses in-depth interviews with ten (10) individuals with various ethnic backgrounds from the Middle East, living in the United States either as international students and/or as immigrants. In addition, this study explores the author's lived experiences as a Turkish international student in the U.S. in forms of autoethnographic writings embedded throughout the project. The findings include common themes of metaperceptions such as “terrorist,” “foreigner/not-American/the Other,” “rich (and poor),” “Middle Eastern – Arab – Muslim,” and “white but not white.” Regarding identity negotiation strategies, common patterns were found which emerged as “informing/lecturing,” “avoiding talking/interacting,” “being used to it / not caring about it anymore,” and “use of attire/clothing.” Besides the metaperceptions and identity negotiation strategies, three “contingent” factors emerged from the analysis. These factors (i.e., “beliefs about Americans,” “with/out family member,” and “location/setting”) overlapped with both metaperceptions and identity negotiation strategies of the participants; thus, not only affected them but were also affected by them. Lastly, the research introduces two mini case studies from the participants' own accounts and examines them in detail. Overall, the results of the study indicate that the participants experienced numerous identity gaps due to the inconsistency between their self-perceptions and their metaperceptions. The participants tried to close these identity gaps by utilizing various identity negotiation strategies. The autoethnography section of the paper concluded that the author's metaperceptions were highly consistent with the interviewees' while revealing salient differences in identity negotiations employed by th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sandra Faulkner Ph.D. (Advisor); Gary Heba Ph.D. (Other); Lisa Hanasono Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lara Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Minority and Ethnic Groups

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Educational Studies

The purpose of this narrative study was to understand the experiences of bisexual students relative to their sexual identities and how they negotiate their bisexuality on the college campus. This study employed a critical poststructural epistemology (Sarup, 1993; Tierney, 1993), a queer theoretical framework (Abes & Kasch, 2007; Butler, 1990; Jones, Abes, & Kasch, 2013), and was guided by the following four research questions: (1)What narratives of identity negotiation are told by bisexual college students?, (2) How do systems of power influence bisexual students' narratives of identity negotiation?, (3) What is the perceived significance of identity negotiation for bisexual college students?, and (4) How do bisexual students understand their bisexuality as a result of having to employ identity negotiation strategies? Sixteen participants with differing definitions of bisexuality, preferred identity labels, gender identities, races, ethnicities, and worldviews served as the sample for this dissertation research. Data were collected through two semi-structured interviews, the second of which was informed by a drawing activity. Thematic and dialogic/performance analyses resulted in two contextual themes: Pervasive Binegativity and Hegemony of Binaries. Thematic analysis further revealed five themes characterizing identity negotiation strategies: Settling for Simplicity, Transgressing Normativity, Downplaying Bisexuality, Subtly Signaling Sexuality, and Outness as Advocacy. In addition to the emergent themes, individual participant narratives were also provided to highlight the variety of identities and experiences within the bisexual student community.

Committee: Susan Jones Ph.D. (Advisor); Marc Johnston-Guerrero Ph.D. (Committee Member); Shannon Winnubst Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Media and Communication

The Centers for Disease Control argues that chronic diseases are on the rise (Butler & Modaff, 2016, p. 77; Goodman, Posner, Huang, Parekh, & Koh, 2013, p. 1). Moreover, the Mayo Clinic (2020) acknowledges there are more than 200,000 cases of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis diagnosed in the United States each year. Although, there has been much scholarship produced surrounding chronic illness as a whole (e.g. Badr, 2004; Badr & Acitelli, 2005, 2017; Badr, Acitelli, & Carmack Taylor, 2007; Butler & Modaff, 2016; Charmaz, 1990, 1991, 2002a, 2002b, 2006; Kuluski et al., 2014; Lyons & Meade, 1995), I build from this scholarship and narrow the scope by focusing specifically on Hashimoto's patients. Therefore, this dissertation examined the stories from those living with the chronic invisible illness, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, because I believe they have stories to tell. Furthermore, this dissertation explored the experiences of Hashimoto's patients and how they negotiated their identities throughout their diagnosis process to present day. I used Hecht's (1993, 2014) Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) to frame this study, and I utilized qualitative feminist methodology to structure my project. I completed 30 in-depth interviews, and I invited participants to engage in electronic journal entries, if they so desired. Furthermore, I also incorporated my own vignettes throughout my analysis to ensure I was being reflexive in my work. From my analysis, there were five distinct themes that emerged from the data: before the story was a story, the story, after the story, into perspective, and tomorrow. Overall, the Hashimoto's patients expressed the fact that they felt dismissed by their physicians, stigmatized in the workplace, and they shared their struggles within their relationships. These communication hardships are a problem that need to be further addressed. However, the patients did acknowledge their shifting identities from being well to chronically ill. Being diagnosed with (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sandra Faulkner PhD (Advisor); Amelia Carr PhD (Other); John Dowd PhD (Committee Member); Lisa Hanasono PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Gender; Gender Studies; Health

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2019, Recreation Studies (Education)

Curiosity about the motivations of thru-hikers has arisen on numerous occasions but whether that motivation changes throughout the hike has not been extensively researched, even in the social sciences. A long-distance hiker is stripped of everything during their hike, leaving only their true character. Though long-distance hiking is thought to be a positive and transformative experience, a thru-hike is not without its hardships. Ankle pain, heat exhaustion, dehydration, quarter-sized blisters, cramps, and broken gear are just some of the many reasons a person may quit a thru-hike. This begs the question, what about thru-hiking, or what is inside that individual, that allows them to continue on to the finish when everything in their mind and body is telling them to quit? Three million people hike on the Appalachian Trail each year, and last year alone over 1,100 people completed the entire trail. Although the number of people attempting the trail is increasing, the number of thru-hikers that complete the trail are falling. Long-distance hikers continue hiking because they want to finish, or because they enjoy the art of walking in nature. Simple yet profound, if hikers never finished a hike they would not be motivated to keep trying. This would result in doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which changes in long-distance hikers' motivations can be explained through factors related to autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and understand adversities faced on the trail and how hikers overcome these challenges.

Committee: Bruce Martin PhD (Advisor); Andy Szolosi PhD (Committee Member); Holly Raffle PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Behavioral Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Environmental Education; Environmental Studies; Physical Education; Psychology; Recreation; Social Psychology; Sports Management