A practical and reliable alternative or supplement to injury accident data is necessary to diagnose dangerous sites and evaluate remedial measures because available accident data is scarce, is lacking in detail about the events preceding the accident and it takes a long time to accumulate statistically reliable data. The most favoured alternative is the Traffic Conflicts Technique which satisfies most of the requirements of a supplementary measure, but has so far only been successfully validated for rural dual carriageway intersections (Spicer, 1973). To establish the technique it is necessary a) to ensure that the subjective judgements on which it is based are reliable, b) to develop the best methods of recording conflicts, and of training and selecting observers, and then c) to test the validity of the best available technique. The main part of this thesis reports three studies aimed at each one of these issues. In the first study intra observer reliability tested on filmed material varied between rs = 0.30 and 0.91 (0.65 overall for N = 42), but poor observers could be identified. By selecting the best observers an overall reliability figure of up to 0.88 could be obtained. Reliable observers remained reliable or even improved slightly on the second testing. These reliable observers also showed good agreement with expert judges who had viewed the film many times, and by selection a correlation with the criterion value of up to 0.83 could be obtained. In the second study a new recording method was developed, incorporating factors that experienced observers used to differentiate the grades of severity currently in use. This helped observers by defining the criteria for detection and grading of a conflict more objectively. This increased the overall intra observer reliability from 0.73 to 0.80, and agreement with the criterion values from 0.66 to 0.76. Transfer from laboratory to field led to a drop in the numbers of conflicts reported. From these studies and a survey of the requirements of local authority accident investigation units, a manual and training package was developed giving guidance on training and selecting observers for the purpose of obtaining reliable conflict data, such as that required for validating the technique. In the third study this package was validated in a study of a sample of eight urban T-junctions. Again the best observers were selected and found to have an overall reliability of 0.88. It was found that, when rear end conflicts were excluded (on the grounds that they led to so few reported injury accidents while occurring in large numbers), there was a high correlation between accidents per vehicle and conflicts per vehicle (rs = 0.79, p<0.025), accounting for 62% of the variance. This compares very favourably with the maximum possible percentage (77%) which could be expected given the relaibility (rs = 0.88) of the observers. Although a validity correlation of 0.79 is very satisfactory and the method of obtaining the data is reasonably economical, an attempt was made to find a still more economical alternative to accident statistics. The most obvious of these are subjective judgements or a combination of these with traffic flow. Traffic flow data for different manoeuvres at each of the eight T-junction sites were obtained and various groups of people were asked to judge the subjective risk of these sites from scale maps and photographs or directly on-site. Judgements from maps and photographs tended to be negatively correlated with accidents. The best subjective estimate (driving instructors judging on-site) correlated 0.44. An attempt to improve on these by combining the traffic flows and judged risk of the different manoeuvres at each site failed to produce a higher correlation. None of these correlations were significant, but the failure of any one of several different corrrelations to be higher than 0.46 suggests very strongly that these simpler methods are very unlikely to have the validity of the full conflicts technique. However, the present study has validated the Traffic Conflicts Technique only for urban T-junctions (the commonest of all accident sites). It could, therefore, only be used for evaluating the effects of small changes in the layout of such junctions. It could be used to evaluate more radical changes eg. T-junction converted to a mini roundabout, provided the conflict to accident ratios of the different layouts were known. In this study the conflict to accident ratio was 125:1 for vehicles turning right out of the minor road. For the T-junctions as a whole it was 275:1 while Older and Spicer(1976) found a ratio of 2000:1 for rural dual carriageway intersections. By obtaining more information of this kind, the utility of the Traffic Conflicts Technique could be greatly extended.

This thesis is an empirical investigation of the strategic use of information in the airline industry, and explores the development of competition in the airline industry from an information perspective. The research traces the evolution in the environmental conditions facing airlines from World War I to the present. The research also analyses evolution of the uses of information. Information is an enabler, allowing things to be done, but information can also be a resource in itself. The research finds growing strategic use of information from automation to using information as a resource for strategic flexibility. The main sources of information that airlines use in their strategic efforts are analysed, as well as the ways in which airlines procure this information and the uses they make of it in strategy. The research finds evidence of distinct phases in the evolution of the uses made of information by airlines. Crucial to airline strategic flexibility is local market information acquired informally. However, the evidence also illustrates the serious difficulties airlines face in using the external information about the markets in which they operate in their strategy. Different streams of academic literature support the findings of this empirical research.

The UK airport industry faced regulatory reform following the 1986 Airports Act. The regulatory reform not only included privatisation of the then nationalised British Airports Authority, but also changed the airports that used to be directly owned and managed by local authorities into autonomous pics. As a result, the industry includes four categories of institutional arrangement for the airports in the UK, i. e., (1) privatised airports with price regulation, (2) privatised airports without price regulation, (3) a local authority airport plc with price regulation, and (4) local authority airports plc without price regulation. The regulatory reform involves the imposition of price cap regulation on 'designated' airports' average airport charge levels. In this thesis focus is placed upon the predictions of outcome changes in this industry by the regulatory reform. The framework of the analyses is based on applied microeconomics, particularly on the theory of regulation. The predictions regarding the airport charges rebalancing effect and productive efficiency are accompanied by empirical analyses as to finding any performance changes. Predictions and empirical analyses were carried out mainly with regard to (1) allocative efficiency in price rebalancing and (2) technical efficiency in production. The price regulation's constraint form is the 'Average Revenue Approach' and some economists suggest this leads to efficiency distortion. 'Designated' airports' price cap constraint uses only the passenger numbers to 'average' the level of total airport charge revenue. The thesis shows that this approach would produce a different outcome from the general outcome predicted through a typical 'Average Revenue Approach' using both a simple model and interdependency demand model, followed by an empirical analysis using price ratio data. As to productive efficiency, after predictions of the outcome I used Data Envelopment Analysis to test efficiency scores in (A) the then nationalised British Airports Authority/privatised BAA as time series, and (B) private airports and local authority airports after the reform as a panel comparison.

This thesis aims at investigating the behaviour of airlines in recently liberalised markets, by making use of the Brazilian air transportation as a case study. In order to accomplish this objective, the following three essays were developed: a study of low cost carrier entry behaviour, an analysis of the pricing behaviour of the major incumbents in the industry, and, finally, an assessment of airline conduct in the most important market in the country. All essays contain empirical investigation performed by making use of data supplied by Brazil’s Department of Civil Aviation, DAC. In the first essay, the entry of Gol Airlines on several Brazilian domestic routes, in 2001 and 2002, is analysed in order to draw inference on the competition between a discounter in rapid expansion and the full-service carriers. A route-choice model is estimated by making use of a flexible post-entry equilibrium profits equation and accounting for endogeneity of the main variables. The second essay aims at empirically investigating the pricing behaviour of the legacy carriers in Brazil, with special focus on reactions to the entry of Gol, in 2001. A study of localised competitive advantage regarding the determinants of pricing power is performed along with the analysis of the pattern of price reactions by the incumbents. A single econometric framework is designed and estimated with panel data controlling for city-specific effects. And finally, the third essay aims at assessing the impacts of economic liberalisation on the route Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo. By making use of both a two-stages budgeting representation of the demand system, and a competition model with product heterogeneity among rivals, and based on the framework of the New Empirical Industrial Organisation, it was possible to examine the existence of a structural change on airlines’ conduct parameters due to the regulatory reform.

This thesis addresses the interface between producers of new media and their audiences/users as it manifests itself in production. It is based on a case study of NESTA Futurelab (a production-research laboratory in educational new media) conducted in its first year of existence, as its staff sought to define the endeavour —'what it is for' and, more importantly, 'whom it is for'. Drawing on science and technology studies (STS) and media theory, this study challenges models of the producer-user interface which endorse 'technical mediation' in proposing alternatives to its three components — the use bias, overstated co-design and the ontological divide between producers and users. In response to the use bias, the study of Futurelab demonstrates that the producers' perceptions of their audiences (both users and partners) determine from the outset decisions as to the organization's purpose, structure, methodology and outputs. Overstated co-design is countered by uncovering the producers' downplaying of direct user involvement and any pretension to scientific methodology through which they engage the users. This study stresses the more pervasive practice of mediation whereby they represent the absent users. This is further conceptualized through their portrayal as 'experience-based experts' — the producers claim the ability to contribute substantively to production by virtue of their social experience, while minimizing their technical competence. Lastly, the presumed ontological divide between producers and users is contested by illustrating that the spheres of production and reception overlap in the producers' experience, which is reactivated on an ad hoc basis in production. Through notions such as 'reflexivity', 'prior feedback', 'producer-user overlap', `mediated quasi-interaction' and 'experience-based expertise', the producer-user interface is thus inscribed in the continuity of producers' social experience rather than being seen as an interaction purposely and strategically instated at a discrete moment. The most notable instances of continuity are captured by the producers' playing of the synthetic role of producer-user, which rests on the claimed proximity between production and other relevant social situations.

THE TELEVISION MESSAGE AS SOCIAL OBJECT: A comparative study of the structure and content of television programmes in Britain (excluding public affairs, children's television and shorts). The thesis will be both a theoretical and empirical examination of the applicability of the varieties of analysis of symbolic orders which have been advanced by such writers as Levi-Strauss and Foucault. The thesis is an exploration, through the study of the narrative structure of a series of television drama programmes, of the relationship between television, myths and folktales. Following upon work done principally by Claude Levi-Strauss and Vladimir Propp, but also others writing in the field of semiological and structural analysis, a detailed examination of the video-recorded texts of a thirteen part drama series is presented. It is argued in the context of an examination of, respectively, television and language, television and the mythic, and of the nature of narrative, that the television drama preserves the forms which otherwise might be thought of as particular to oral culture and communication. Television, in its preservation of these forms, and in its generally mythic character, gains its effectiveness thereby and must be understood sociologically in such terns. The effect of such an understanding, it is argued, will be to challenge any comprehension of the medium simply as the particular product of a particular historical period and/or an imposition in culture of one world view on an other. The television message is both a collective product and a transhistorical one. It is argued that on both counts it needs to be understood as a genuine expression of a social need, though in its expression of that need it does not necessarily simply act to preserve existing social and cultural conditions.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 25 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts to the Dept. of Chinese Studies, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2007; thesis submitted 2006. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [144]-151).

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Rebecca A. Baltzer and Eugene A. Gratovich. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Calgary (Canada), 2002.