This research seeks to determine the necessary conditions for the United States to host another Olympic Games. To lay the foundation for my research, I historically trace the declining number of cities bidding for the Olympics. While exogenous factors such as political protests, terrorist acts, and boycotts contribute to a decline in the number of candidate cities from 1968 to 1984, modern disinterest in hosting the Olympics is motivated by endogenous dynamics derived from the bidding process. To determine how the bidding process affects the likelihood of hosting the Olympics and uncover the roots of successful bids, I analyze four case studies of former United States bids. These case studies include: Denver’s withdrawn bid for the 1976 Winter Olympics, Los Angeles’ successful bid for the 1984 Games, Boston’s relinquished bid for the 2024 Olympics, and consequentially, Los Angeles’ bid for the 2024 Olympics. I argue the structure of the bidding process inherently favors special interests with the most to gain from hosting the Games at the expense of the city as a whole. Stemming from the central condition of public support, I deduce six underlying conditions that are pivotal for successful bids: 1) the use of existing facilities and infrastructure; 2) absence of opposition groups; 3) private funding; 4) ‘insurance’ measures against cost overruns; 5) alignment of Olympic plans and urban development; and 6) greater use of the region. These conditions do not guarantee a successful Olympic bid, but are fundamental for the Olympic Games to return to the United States.

The Special Olympics Healthy Athletes initiative promotes wellness of the athletes with intellectual disabilities and education for medical professionals. Healthy Athletes has created a hearing screening program, Healthy Hearing, to help athletes with intellectual disabilities get the otological and audiological care they need. This program promotes a healthy hearing lifestyle and educates medical professionals regarding the need of health care for the intellectually disabled population. The physiologic, otologic, and audiologic abnormalities often occurring in the intellectually disabled population bring special attention for the need to determine the prevalence rate of hearing loss among the athletes participating in Special Olympics events. Investigation of the prevalence of hearing loss in 1450 athletes participating in the 2004 Summer Games and Fall Sports Classic and 2005 Fall Sports Classic in Utah, USA and the 2005 World Winter Games in Nagano, Japan was made. A total pure-tone failure rate of 31.1% among athletes in all four games was found, however follow-up was recommended for 34.7% of athletes. Athletes were found to have a greater prevalence of cerumen management problems than the general population and 34% of those passing the pure-tone hearing screen needed cerumen removal. Due to inherent audiological and otological complications found in individuals with intellectual disabilities, regular cerumen management and sensory testing for athletes are recommended.

It has been well documented that female athletes receive much less media attention than male athletes, with estimates placing coverage of male athletes at 95% of all sport-related media (Coakley, 1986). While not to that extent, studies focusing on media portrayals of Olympic athletes also confirm that the media dedicates the majority of coverage to male athletes (Duncan, 1990; Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988; Hambrick, Simmons, Greenhalgh, & Greenwell, 2010; Higgs, Weiller, & Martin, 2003; Lee, 1992; Kinnick, 1998; Pfister, 1978). Some evidence suggests that media coverage of female athletes and the recognition of their achievements are slowly increasing (Higgs et al., 2003; Kinnick, 1998). While the aforementioned studies show many of the same results, no recent research on the subject was found. The majority of past research has focused on summer Olympians specifically, and no studies were found looking at the past five Olympic Games. This study will add to the literature by providing new data to compare to that of previous studies. The author conducted a content analysis, looking at six online media outlets, and selecting 100 athlete profiles. The profiles were coded for any reference to the physical/emotional or strength/weakness characteristics of the athlete. The author analyzed the data using SPSS. Findings show no statistically significant relationships between gender and athlete characteristics, suggesting noticeable improvements in the quality and quantity of media coverage for female athletes when compared to previous studies.

No description available.

In this thesis, applying an innovative postmodern equal-weight/sequential QUAN→PHEN Mixed-Methods Phenomenological Research (‘MMPR’) approach to study an Olympics’ impact within its two-cluster socio-demographic footprint forms its main contribution to knowledge. Facilitating between-methods triangulation is a novel eclectic pragmatic approach that is used to capture the richness of thematic data flowing from in-depth, open-ended interviews with most – 62 in all – senior Hoteliers spread evenly between distinct urban Metro-Vancouver and rural alpine-Whistler, whilst concurrently capitalizing on the availability of a unique BC Stats proprietary micro-municipal-level secondary data source, i.e., British Columbia’s ‘Additional Hotel Room Tax’ (‘AHRT’). Typically, traditional mono-method-positivist neo-classical economic syntheses are used to quantify an Olympic Games’ ex-ante or ex-post impact. This study’s findings confirm that such syntheses attempts, at the micro-municipal level, lead to inevitable dead-ends. At a sub-national level of micro-granularity, using available economic models is an impossible task due to the insurmountable practical problem of complete lack of, or paucity, of data. When applied to assess mega-events, such modelling is shown to lack credibility; models are insufficiently comprehensive or its users consciously engage in ‘shenanigans’ by force-fitting input/output to produce pre-ordained outcomes for political expedience and meeting agency interests. The ‘MMPR’ approach acknowledges and respects the established and ‘current-thinking’ paradigmatic epistemological and ontological perspectives. ‘Hotel Activity’, measured via ‘AHRT’, is substituted as a ‘Proxy’ for ‘Tourism’ following empirically establishing these three variables as highly correlated. Prevalent academic findings of negative impacts from Winter Olympics are not borne out. Phenomenological issues of ‘illusory correlations’ and ‘data saturation’ are addressed.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

While the resurgence of interest in the study of status in international politics has brought forth new insights into how status influences political decision-making and the behavior of states internationally, there are still areas where our understanding of status is hampered by inconsistent theorizing and a lack of empirical testing of the many assumptions these theories rest on. Over the course of three separate papers, I address three issue areas within the study of international status with the goal of clarifying theoretical gray areas and substantiating hypotheses that are key pillars within in this research program. In particular, across the three papers, I show how the current application of social identity theory, though flawed, not only can still push the field’s understanding of status further, but can also fill in gaps in the existing literature that other frameworks have yet to do. In my first paper, I point out fundamental issues with the Larson and Shevchenko (2014, 2019) reinterpretation of SIT for the international political context. Like Ward (2017), I show that their framework conflates the related, but distinct concepts of social mobility and individual mobility in such a way that destroys the boundaries between individualistic and group-oriented strategies and introduces a level of analysis issue not originally present in the original conception. I offer a reconceptualization of the social identity approach to international status that introduces a two-tiered framework that differentiates status strategies available based on whether the social identity of study is nationality or whether it is the state’s membership in informal and formal international groups and organizations. While the former is a social identity that is salient for most members of a nation at any given time, I theorize that the latter is a social identity likely most salient to those who engage in foreign policy or represent the state internationally in a formal capacity. This reconceptualization not only addresses a fundamental issue present in the current framework, but also connects sub-national and individual level causal processes implied by many state level theories of status in international relations to state action and policy. Through this paper, I show the continued importance of SIT to our understanding of the influence of status concerns on political decision-making. In my second paper, using Japanese national survey data from 2013, I provide evidence that status is not just the projection of an individual’s personal belief regarding a nation’s international standing. Individuals not only differentiate between their personal evaluations of their own country’s status and the evaluations they assume of others outside their nation, but these evaluations hold even in the face of incentives to downplay another’s status due to ongoing animosity between their countries. Furthermore, I show that individuals who are dissatisfied with the international status of their country not only are more supportive of status-seeking behavior from their state in the form of hosting the Olympics, but are in favor of increased government spending to potentially acquire more international status and national prestige. Status is not only a differentiable belief, but it also impacts support for status-seeking behavior. In my final paper, I again use Japanese national survey data from 2011 to investigate the relationship between status dissatisfaction, nationalism, and patriotism. Social identity theory suggests that individuals will pursue international status due to a desire to positively distinguish their country from other countries and maintain national pride. Given that national pride can manifest as either nationalism or patriotism, which have diverging effects on intergroup relations, to what extent is the desire for status rooted in nationalism and/or patriotism? Using public opinion data from the October 2011 wave of the Survey on the Image of Foreign Countries and Current Topics (SIFCCT) I conduct a regression analysis and find that between nationalism and patriotism, status concerns that drive status seeking behavior are rooted in the former and not the latter. Holding nationalist beliefs makes an individual more likely to be in a state of status dissatisfaction, whereas no significant relationship was found between patriotism and status dissatisfaction. This relationship holds regardless of whether the indicators for patriotism and nationalism are tested independent of one another or when both are included in the same model. These results have important implications regarding what kind of behavior is to be expected from status dissatisfied actors in international politics and the nature of international status seeking