Master of Arts, Miami University, 2021, Speech Pathology and Audiology

Distinctive features of letters is a prominent theory of letter recognition that proposes individual components of letters are separated and then detected individually in order for a person to recognize the letter. The purpose of this study was to locate existing articles that contain distinctive features lists. A systematic review of the research was conducted to find studies involving theories of distinctive features of letters. This research review led to identification of six articles. I applied data concerning alphabet learning and correlated it with distinctive features identified with a previous analysis. Significant correlations between the letter order theory and letters that slant were found, which suggests a relationship between distinctive features and the order in which children acquire the alphabet. These findings have implications for identifying differences in readers with and without dyslexia.

Committee: Arnold Olszewski Ph.D., CCC-SLP (Advisor); Jenna Silver Luque Ph.D., CCC-SLP (Committee Member); Kelly Knollman-Porter Ph.D., CCC-SLP (Committee Member); Aaron Shield Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism (Communication)

In November 1945, Johnson Publishing Company released its second publication titled Ebony, a magazine modeled after Life magazine, which featured photographic spreads and stories about various topics about the Black community. Five years later, the publishing company released Tan Confessions, an African American confessions magazine inspired by True Confessions, printed from November 1950 through October 1952. The magazine was renamed TAN and rebranded into a homemaker's magazine. This research analyzes the content of these magazines and 619 letters to the editor— 350 letters from volumes one and two of Ebony and 269 letters from volumes one and two of Tan Confessions. The study looks at the magazine content and letters to the editor through the theoretical lenses of social comparison theory to examine how the editors of Ebony and Tan Confessions published and categorized letters to the editor, which serves as a representation how they presented reader reaction to their audience. This research is relevant and important to not only the history of Black magazine publication, but it is an essential piece of the rich and longstanding American magazine history. Johnson Publishing Company created an empire by printing a succession of high-circulating magazines that were unlike any before them because they published aspects of African American life that were not seen in mainstream media at the time.

Committee: Aimee Edmondson (Advisor); Craig Davis (Committee Chair); Bill Reader (Committee Chair) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; History; Journalism; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2020, Theology

Sexism is a reality in the Catholic Church. The Church's teaching on women, though true, needs to be explicated more carefully to avoid a sense of woman's incompleteness in both humanity (through misunderstood “complementarity”) and imaging the Trinitarian God (if she only images God as “mother” in a family). Augustine can help bring balance to the lacuna. Review of feminist theologians on Augustine find two major concerns: inequality between women and men in imaging God, and a question of his development in appreciating women in the Church (Chapter One). His letters track such a growth, but from a mix of positive and negative statements to increasingly positive assessments of women (Chapter Two). Augustine finds women to be equal with men in being the image of God, in their minds, but female and male bodies do not equally represent God's image. The representation corresponds to contemplative and “temporal management” aspects of mind in every human. Only the contemplative aspect is “image of God”; the temporal management aspect is not unless joined with the contemplative. Augustine wants to stress, however, that women are God's image, and in this life all of us are and are not yet God's image. The inequality in representation is problematic, but the inequality is resolved in the Incarnation of Christ, the divine Word “married” to humanity Inequality is resolved for women and men completely in the resurrection of women's and men's bodies to the fullness of redeemed equality. This is what it means according to Augustine to grow up fully into the Image of God, Christ (Eph. 4:15) (Chapter Three). Christ, the union of divinity and humanity gives himself to the women and men of the Church through the bishop's body so that the bishop in his embodiment is devoted to the temporal management of the Church. The bishop finds himself in such embodied solidarity with women in the Church that they are better understood as incorporated into each other so closely that (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jana Bennett (Advisor); Sandra Yocum (Committee Member); William Portier (Committee Member); Dennis Doyle (Committee Member); William Collinge (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Religion; Religious History; Theology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Business Administration

In this dissertation, we examine some of the important drivers of quality and compliance performance. The context of this dissertation is pharmaceutical industry, where quality and compliance is crucial for public health and thus is heavily regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Despite the critical importance, however, the failure incidents in this industry have been steadily increasing over time, a trend that runs counter to those observed in other regulated industries such as airline and railroads. Yet, research concerning this important phenomenon in the pharmaceutical industry is limited. We consider three broad categories of quality and compliance drivers – pharmaceutical policy, manufacturing strategy and organizational learning. By investigating how the interplays between these categories of factors influence pharmaceutical quality and compliance performance, this dissertation not only advances the knowledge in the literature, but also sheds light on the increasing failure trend in this industry. Two standalone essays in this dissertation examine pharmaceutical quality and compliance performance at different levels: 1) at the drug level, where quality performance is measured by serious drug recalls, and 2) at the inspection level, where compliance performance is measured by violations of current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) regulations as determined by the FDA during the plant inspection, respectively. In the first essay (Chapter 2), we compare the quality risk of generic drugs, whose approval and use has been facilitated by the government to reduce healthcare costs, against that of the corresponding original brand-name drugs. Then, we further examine whether manufacturing drugs in less-advanced economies, an increasingly prevalent manufacturing strategy in the pharmaceutical industry, influences the generic drug-quality risk relationships. Based on a large-scale, drug-level panel dataset, we find that there is no significant diff (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Gray (Advisor); Aravind Chandrasekaran (Committee Member); Hyunwoo Park (Committee Member); George Ball (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Ambassador Crawford / Department of Accounting

This study examines the effect of SEC tax comment letters on institutional investors' information acquisition activities and consequential tax disclosures. These two research questions are related to the SEC's mission to protect investors, which is the primary objective of the SEC's comment letter public release policy. Regarding the first research question, I find that institutional investors' information acquisition activities for tax-related comment letter conversations, which include recipient firms' responses, are greater than those for non-tax related conversations. Moreover, institutional investors are more likely to obtain comment-letter conversations for recipient firms that have appeared to be tax aggressive in both current and previous years. Institutional investors are more likely to obtain comment-letter conversations if the SEC comment letters include more uncertain tax topics. Regarding the second research question, I find a significant increase in the number of words in both tax footnotes and paragraphs but with slightly reduced readability, suggesting that managers modify the consequential tax disclosures with their own purposes. This research achieves several aims. First, the findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the consequences of receiving comment letters and their resolution. Second, this study contributes to the literature investigating investors' acquisition of tax-related information. This paper also contributes to tax information disclosure literature as well as to the literature on textual analysis in accounting and finance. The findings of this study will have implications for regulators, investors, and corporate managers.

Committee: Wei Li (Committee Chair); Shunlan Fang (Committee Member); Drew Sellers (Committee Member); Roubezah Razavi (Committee Member) Subjects: Accounting

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

In this hybrid poetry compilation, I am exploring personal and universal identity by utilizing the formal aspects of collage, verse, prose, charts, and multimodal artifacts. Each chapter contains its own focus, though overall can be read according to the reader's sensibility; each page is an experience– an inner and outer exploration of symbol and meaning and tone– much like those described in I. A. Richard's Science and Poetry, but in a contemporary rendering which draws inspiration from texts like Olio and The Black Automaton. In this project I have merged many mediums, including a stack of letters from the summer of 1942 written by my paternal grandparents; photos and pdf files of these letters, scanned by my Mother; images and illustrations from science textbooks, gardening magazines, and art anthologies cut and pasted into Surrealist style collage; overheard text; memory; dreams; love notes; as well as the uncategorizable material of lived experience.

Committee: cris cheek (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

MA, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

By examining the lives and battle experiences of three brothers, this thesis explores their perceptions of cowardice and courage as Union soldiers during the American Civil War. Using primary sources from a newly uncovered collection, the Reiter Family Collection, and using a single family, the Bassetts, as a microcosm of both their community and northern society this thesis examines questions such as in the values, motivation, and struggles of loss, remembrance, and survivors guilt. As historians have often understudied the complicated nexus between experiences of cowardice and courage, this research takes an approach not common in the extant literature. What I refer to as the continuum shows that soldiers felt courage and cowardice concurrently. As a result, there was, and is, more to study about cowardice and courage than the obvious dichotomy. This work describes these terms on a continuum, a flexible scale wherein a person can experience cowardice and courage simultaneously. Examining cowardice and courage through the experiences of the Bassett brothers, this thesis explores who the brothers were, where they came from, and how they fit into the greater scheme of Union wartime society. It continues with an analysis of the experiences and perceptions of the brothers and their different cowardly and courageous experiences. Finally, the thesis concludes with a detailed glance at their successful or failed attempts at redemption.

Committee: Kevin Adams PhD (Advisor); Leonne Hudson PhD (Committee Member); Elaine Frantz (Parsons) PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Gender; History; Mental Health; Military History

Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.), University of Dayton, 2017, International Marian Research Institute

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Committee: Johann Roten (Committee Chair) Subjects: Religion; Religious History; Theology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Political Science

Is there a benefit to working well with others in Congress? Many of the bills introduced are written not only by the single member listed as its sponsor, but by a coalition of representatives who have worked together to author mutually agreeable language. Similarly, members frequently collaborate with colleagues in writing policy letters, running caucuses, and hosting events. Yet there is very little understanding of the nature of these relationships, or how members of Congress benefit from them, as data availability has limited the ability of legislative politics scholars to estimate their impact. Using a unique dataset of Dear Colleague letters, which are an essential communication tool in the modern Congress, I identify the members who collaborate on policy initiatives in a substantive manner. I use these data to map the policy collaboration network of the House of Representatives to answer three key questions that will greatly improve our understanding of congressional behavior and the legislative process: 1) How do members of Congress choose their collaborative partners? 2) What are the legislative benefits of collaboration? 3) What are the electoral benefits of collaboration? The first question is addressed using a temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM) that allows me to consider the policy collaboration network for each Congress in its entirety and examine the endogenous and exogenous factors that lead members to working with each other. I find evidence of several distinctive patterns, including a strong tendency towards bipartisan collaboration in a highly polarized Congress, an overall inclination towards collaboration where there are shared constituencies, and a network where personal relationships and reputations are key. The second essay examines the legislative benefits of collaboration, specifically whether more collaborative members are more effective legislators. I create several new measures of propensity towards collaboration (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Janet Box-Steffensmeier (Committee Chair); Skyler Cranmer (Committee Member); Michael Neblo (Committee Member); Herbert Weisberg (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This project comprises a digital edition of a selection of letters by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), including all known letters written by the poet between 1889 and 1895, and hosted online by Colby College Libraries' Digital Collections. The edition is based on work started last century by Professor Wallace L. Anderson of Bridgewater State University, and left unfinished by him at his death in 1984. Professor Anderson collected a vast quantity of Robinson's letters from various repositories and private parties around the country. He transcribed them and provided annotations and textual notes for about three-quarters of them. For my project, I have edited, updated and corrected a substantial portion of Anderson's transcriptions, as well as completed fresh transcriptions of my own, checking them for accuracy against Robinson's holographs held at Harvard and the University of Virginia. I have formatted the new edition so as to more accurately represent the holographs, and have added my own textual notes and annotations to those of Anderson, along with an introductory critical essay detailing my methods and principles. It is of primary importance to me that these letters be accessible to both the scholarly community and the general public, with a view to maximizing their usefulness for literary and historical research. I have settled on digital publication as the best means to achieve this end because it will render the letters accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection, free of charge. The project of publishing the remainder of Robinson's letters in this format is expected to continue beyond the dissertation.

Committee: Paul Gaston (Advisor) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Literature

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.), Xavier University, 2017, Psychology

Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders. There is no “Gold Standard” measure or assessment battery that exists for the assessment of ADHD. The Numbers & Letters (NL) test is a brief four-part test that assesses many of the cognitive domains implicated in ADHD, including selective attention, sustained attention, divided attention, information processing, and psychomotor speed. The main focus of this study was to provide further evidence of validity for the NL test in a clinical sample of individuals undergoing comprehensive ADHD and LD evaluations at a small Midwestern University clinic. Consistent with previous research, individuals diagnosed with ADHD performed significantly lower than expected on six of seven primary scores on the measure. Moreover, previous research assessing convergent validity was extended with NL test scores correlating well with other accepted measures of attention and processing speed. A component of Part D of the NL test that is not included in score calculations was not shown to be associated with the diagnosis of ADHD in this sample. The NL test appears to be a valid measure of attention and processing speed that may add helpful data to a comprehensive assessment battery, but it is not specifically designed to support or reject the diagnosis of ADHD.

Committee: John Barrett Ph.D (Committee Chair); Hart Kathleen Ph.D, ABPP (Committee Member); Delaney Cynthia Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This thesis analyzes the heterogeneous works of Bian Zhilin (1910-2000), a famous modern Chinese poet, during 1937-1958, a relatively understudied period of his career in the extant scholarship. In particular, I focus on his wartime poetry in the poetry collection Letters of Comfort (Weilaoxin ji), his wartime novel Mountains and Rivers (Shanshan shuishui), and his decision to burn the manuscript of the latter in the 1950s. In reading these texts closely, particularly the novel, within their literary and historical contexts, I demonstrate that this period is crucial in Bian Zhilin's career as it bridges his prewar life and his post-1949 acclimation to the new socialist regime. More specific, I argue that the change and un-change paradox/dialectic, or the collision and collusion of maintaining inner autonomy and participating in historical transformation, underlie all of Bian's works in the wartime. It is first shown in his Yan'an poetry, then fully manifested in the novel Mountains and Rivers, and further demonstrated in his post-1949 literary pursuits. To reconcile the inner and outer orientations of self, Bian constructs a notion of “spiral movement,” which again plays with the dialectic of change and un-change, to restore the traditional harmony of self. An overview of Bian's career and life since the war demonstrates that “spiral movement” acts not only as an instruction for Bian to write the novel, but also as his schematization of the world and a guiding principle of his life. In so doing, I try to overthrow the commonly-held label of Bian Zhilin as merely a poet in current scholarship and reveal his multifaceted persona. I also argue against the popular view that the incomplete novel Mountains and Rivers was a waste of Bian Zhilin's creative energy and a disruption in his poetic career, and unravel the complicated aesthetics, thought, and character of Bian manifested in the novel. Furthermore, through studying the case of Bian Zhilin, I discuss some large (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kirk Denton (Advisor); Meow Hui Goh (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Literature; Modern Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2016, English

Jude Matheson died upside-down. His long-lost brother, Paul, and his lifelong friend, Sadie, have been cursed since birth. And their only chance at salvation died with Jude. For Sadie, Jude is the only family that has never abandoned her. But when Paul blows into town, his only desire is to find the brother he never knew he needed. And in the end, only one of them can have the family they so desperately seek. Paul Wilder and Sadie Young both want to be saved. For generations their families have dragged themselves through life, trapped on a dead-end road in Shiloh's Point. Here history repeats itself: their paths have been shaped by inheritance, their fates predetermined by their families. Jude is the turning point, the culmination of their two paths. Through him, they can break from their families' fates. And they do: when Jude Matheson dies upside-down, their lives are changed forever—the only uncertainty left is who will come out on the other side.

Committee: Margaret Luongo (Committee Chair); Brian Roley (Committee Member); Keith Tuma (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2016, English

Literary scholars question if Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese should be read as a biographical map of the Browning's courtship, or as more recent scholarship suggests, as a literary performance. While biographical references can be traced throughout the sequence, scholars fail to notice the ways in which Barrett Browning highlight the artificial nature of the sonnets, reminding readers that the feelings expressed within the sequence depend on her skill and power as a poet. I suggest that over the course of the sequence, she increasingly incorporates the highly intimate, personal, spontaneous language of the love letter into her sonnets in order to achieve the illusion of absolute sincerity, an illusion that is so successful, subsequent readers interpreted the sequence as pure biography. She refers to two kinds of love letters in the sonnets and calls attention to the parts of the love letter that contrast and parallel with her sonnets. By comparing the poetry and love letters, Barrett Browning tells the readers she is about to put on a performance, and in the penultimate sonnet she does put on a performance, no longer self-reflexively commenting. She controls the degree of sincerity intended in the sonnets to show her skill at creating sincere poetry, but this often becomes overlooked by the critic's stories attached to the publication, which disrupt the intended author/speaker relationship and cause the sequence to lose the potency that should exemplify Barrett Browning's careful construction of sonnets.

Committee: Melissa Gregory Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Accounting and MIS

In June 2004, the SEC made a policy decision to publicly release comment letter correspondence following its filing reviews. Comment letter correspondence represents a dialogue between the SEC staff and public companies' managers regarding their disclosure decisions. The release of comment letter correspondence could provide investors with greater context and detail underlying firms' financial reports. Leading up to the policy, there was an increase in the number of Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests for comment letter correspondence, which suggests that it was perceived to have informational value. However, there is limited empirical evidence on whether investors respond to its release. I specifically examine whether comment letter releases (1) provide investors with incremental information beyond companies' existing financial reports and (2) influence information asymmetry among investors. I do not find strong evidence of investor responses absent a concurrent filing, and I find mixed evidence on whether information asymmetry increases immediately following comment letter releases. Further, the increases in information asymmetry are exacerbated for releases with a high level of comment letter attention by sophisticated investors. Overall, these results suggest that comment letter releases are not informative to investors in the absence of a concurrent or future information release and that information asymmetry is mitigated by non-sophisticated investor attention to the releases.

Committee: Darren Roulstone (Committee Chair); Anne Beatty (Committee Member); Zahn Bozanic (Committee Member); Brian Mittendorf (Committee Member); Andrew Van Buskirk (Committee Member) Subjects: Accounting

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Curriculum and Instruction (Education)

This quasi-experimental study investigated the impact that daily writing instruction and bi-weekly pen pal correspondence had on third graders' writing development and reading comprehension in a Midwest, rural elementary school. The treatment group participated in a 12-week writing intervention program in which they exchanged letters with second-grade pen pals on a bi-weekly basis. Letters were informative, expressive, and autonomous, as they were based on daily graphic organizers students completed, on which they wrote about school-related subjects of their choice. The control group did not participate in the writing intervention program, as they received their typical writing instruction. Both groups' reading comprehension scores were assessed via a S.T.A.R. pretest, which was administered prior to the writing treatment, and a S.T.A.R. posttest, which was administered after the writing treatment had concluded. Results showed that students whose writing substantially developed experienced development in the following areas: 1) text structure; 2) written expression; 3) audience awareness; and 4) voice. There was substantial interplay amongst the first three components, which resulted in a pronounced voice throughout students' letters. Conversely, students whose writing did not develop throughout the 12-week period did not develop in the four aforementioned areas, and thus never established a consistent voice in their letters. Quantitative results showed that while between-group differences in the pretest to posttest reading comprehension scores favored the treatment group, the results were not statistically significant.

Committee: Gene Geist Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Krisanna Machemes Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sara Helfrich Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeesun Jung Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Language Arts; Literacy

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, History

From the start of the First Indochina War to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, Vietnamese and Americans (each with their many allies) fought to claim Vietnam in the name of communism or democracy. While violent bloodshed and constant miscommunication did occur quite frequently, both parties attempted to cross cultural boundaries in hopes of negotiation. This project focuses upon cross-cultural communication from 1945-1969. I highlight letters and telegrams between the following American presidents and North, South Vietnamese leaders: Ho Chi Minh and Harry Truman, Ngo Dinh Diem and Dwight Eisenhower, Ngo Dinh Diem and John F. Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon B. Johnson, and Ho Chi Minh and Richard Nixon. I use more personalized forms of communication to create interconnections rather than continue to emphasize cultural disconnect and misunderstanding. Specifically, I argue that despite ideological and socio-cultural differences, each leader did strive and hope for something other than war. Unfortunately, these individuals remained steadfastly devoted to the idea of ideology and victory more than peaceful resolution. Letters, telegrams, memorandums, and meetings serve as the main primary sources for this project. Since the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, government documents pertaining to the Vietnam War have been declassified, transcribed, and made public. In particular, this project utilizes the National Archives' digital collection of the Pentagon Papers and Office of the Historian's digital Foreign Relations of the United States.

Committee: Michael Brooks Ph.D (Advisor); Dwayne Beggs Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; World History

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2014, Vision Science

Purpose: To analyze the effectiveness of the clinical referral process at The Ohio State University College of Optometry (OSUCO). This study should foster better understanding of factors that affect patient attendance at referral appointments as well as to identify clinical practices that will promote improved health care delivery. Method: Fifty records of patients referred from the College of Optometry to a specialist were identified and the data collected. In addition one hundred records were selected for the subsequent study. Subsequent study subjects were interviewed regarding patient's perceptions of the effectiveness of the referral process. Calculations were performed to determine the probability of associations between each referral process and factors that may have had an effect on patient's attendance at their referral appointment. Results: Pilot study results indicated it was feasible to obtain referral data from the OSUCO electronic health records and that further study could be considered. In addition the Pilot study did not reveal significant associations between referral processes and attendance at the referral appointment. Subsequent study results found that scheduling of the referral appointment increased with “Letter and Phone Call” referral communications. Caucasian patients were more likely to be referred using “Letter Only” referral communications when compared to other ethnicities. The Binocular Vision Clinic and Low Vision clinic were also more likely to use” Letter Only” referral communications when referring patients. Subsequent study results also found that patients who were referred with “Letter and Phone Call” referral communications had a statistically significant association with positive attendance at the referral appointment. Conclusions: The “Letter and Phone Call” referral communication method resulted in an increase in the patient attendance when compared to the “Letter Only” referral communication method. This difference (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jacqueline Davis OD, MPH (Advisor) Subjects: Health Care; Health Care Management

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2014, Communication Studies (Communication)

In an attempt to unravel the reasons behind the political contentiousness and persistence of the term socialized medicine in discussions of health care reforms, I explored the term's origins and history, frequency in news items, and meanings in contexts. In the following, I present frequency distributions that illustrate the initial emergence of the term socialized medicine in a newspaper article in 1917 and document its continued presence through 2010. I also present the results of a content analysis pilot study of the term in a sample of newspaper articles from 1993 through 2008, which guided my decision to select letters to the editor as the text for analysis in the framing study that follows. I selected letters to the editor written by ordinary citizens from 1993-2010 that include the term socialized medicine in the headline or lead paragraph, and since attitudes about socialized medicine appear to break along political party lines, I evaluated the letters through the lens of George Lakoff's model of conservative and liberal worldviews as described in his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, first published in 1996 and again in 2001. My analysis reveals common liberal and conservative frames that emerged in 1993 and 1994, during the Clinton presidency, and which continued through 2010. My analysis also indicates an increase in the occurrence of pragmatist frames regarding health care reforms, especially during and following the 2008 presidential campaign. This study provides support for Lakoff's theory, and illustrates its potential heuristic value for communication research, particularly in the area of political communication.

Committee: Jerry Miller PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Ethics; Political Science; Rhetoric

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Arts and Sciences : Political Science

This research will explore the different facets of political trust and it will look at the severity of dissatisfaction that exists within the American electorate by analyzing the content of letters written to the editor of various regional newspapers. It will cover the years between 1990 and 2000 and specifically look at three different snap-shots in time: 1990, 1994-95, and 1999. This research will not attempt to measure any increase or decrease regarding the number of Americans who are angry with the government. It will give a general overview of the data and findings, which will include an analysis of where letter writers are directing their anger. It will characterize the nature of this dissatisfaction, its severity, and where this anger fits into theories of government distrust. This research will specifically look at dissatisfaction that is directed at the US Congress and the Supreme Court to determine if the letter writer is angry at the institution or the people within the institution. Demographic differences such as sex, region of country, elite verses mass opinion, and year are also explored. The 1994 congressional election will also be explored regarding the extent to which dissatisfaction and hostility towards government contributed to the unexpected Republican takeover of both houses of Congress. Letters will be critically evaluated for any discussion of the “Contract with America” to determine possible effects it had on the election. Finally, this research will consider the nature and severity of systemic complaints and look at the severity of changes proposed by letter writers.

Committee: Dr. Alfred Tuchfarber (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science, General