Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ball State University, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 12, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-123).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-194).

This study addressed the relational maintenance strategies and the meaning 23 to 35 year old students attributed to their long-distance dating relationships. Ten participants completed in depth interviews exploring the thoughts and feelings individuals held about their current long-distance partner and relationship. Also, commitment and quality of alternatives were addressed including the strengths and weaknesses of the respondent's relationship. Common themes of strong friendship, absolute trust, commitment to one partner, and using the technique of reminiscing were all dominant issues that emerged from the interview data. Social network approval as well as positive role models in the form of older siblings was also instrumental in lending support to the success and general positive attitude felt by participants about the geographic separation. Methods of communication included the telephone and e-mail, which was substituted or supplementary when high phone bills created financial concerns for the respondents. Variation in physical visitation was due to the intersection of academic schedule, affordable transportation, attitude towards work disruptions, geographic distance, and a general willingness to travel. Participants told a story of the geographic separation as both a temporary and necessary inconvenience, rather than a major obstacle or focal point of the relationship. Future directions for studying long-distance dating relationships include collecting couple data and examining gender differences to determine if sex has an impact on how geographic separation is viewed. / Master of Science

This paper examines how many and the most common type of side stops a traveler or travel party makes during long-distance travel of over 100 miles or more. The research uses the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS) because it is one of the few data sources that collects information on stops and side trips for long-distance trips. The paper utilizes two models to estimate side stop behavior: 1) an ordered probit formulation for modeling the number of side trips during long distance travel, and 2) a mixed multinomial logit formulation for modeling the most common side stop purpose during long-distance travel. A variety of variables, including trip and household characteristics, are considered in the model specification. The factors that play the largest role in determining side stop behavior are the primary purpose of the long-distance trip, whether the trip is a planned vacation or not, and the ethnicity of the travelers.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Cleveland State University, 2007. / Abstract. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 8, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62). Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-40).

Phonological processes can be characterized as functions from input strings to output strings, and treating them as mathematical objects like this reveals properties that hold regardless of how we implement them (i.e., with rules, constraints, or other tools). For example, Chandlee (2014) found that a vast majority of phonological processes can be modelled as Strictly Local (SL) functions, which are sensitive to a window of finite size. Long-distance processes like vowel and consonant harmony are exceptions to this generalization, although a key observation is that they look local once irrelevant information is ignored. This thesis shows how such selective attention can be modelled by augmenting SL functions with autosegmental tiers (e.g., Goldsmith, 1976). A single tier is sufficient to capture individual long-distance processes, and having multiple tiers available allows us to model multiple long-distance processes simultaneously as well as interactions between local and non-local patterns. Furthermore, probabilistic variants of these tier-based functions allow for a cognitively plausible model of what Zymet (2015) calls distance-based decay. Unrestricted use of multiple tiers is, however, quite powerful and so I additionally argue that tiersets should be defined from the perspective of individual input elements (i.e., potential process targets). Each input element designates a superset-subset hierarchy of tiers and pays attention to them alone; the tiers specified by another input element are either redundant or irrelevant. Restricting tiersets in this manner has beneficial consequences for learnability as it imparts a structure onto the learner's hypothesis space that can be exploited to great effect. Furthermore, tier-based functions meeting this restriction fail to generate a number of pathological behaviours that can be characterized as subsequential functions, a type of function that has previously been offered as a model of non-local phonological processes (Heinz and Lai, 2013; Luo, 2017; Payne, 2017). In light of their empirical coverage, their comparative lack of pathological predictions, and their efficient learnability, I conclude that tier-based functions act as a more accurate characterization of long-distance phonology.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boise State University, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).

Thesis (M.S.)--Boise State University, 2009. / Title from t.p. of PDF file (viewed June 7, 2010). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-69). Also available on the World Wide Web.