Scholarship & Research
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Item The effect of school safety tip lines on youth suicide prevention(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2021) Hossain, Md Tahmeed; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Isaac SwensenSuicidal deaths of high school-aged youths (14-to-18-year-olds) have almost doubled over the past decade. School safety tip lines, an anonymous reporting method that enables students to submit tips about their suicidal friends and classmates, have emerged as a potential solution to reduce youth suicide. Using data from the CDC's Multiple Causes of Death data for the period 1999-2018, this is the first study to formally investigate the effect of introducing school safety tip lines on youth suicide prevention. My primary identification strategy is a difference-in-differences (DID) method that exploits variation in the timing of the adoption of the safety tip lines across states. I also employ a synthetic control method (SCM) as an alternative identification strategy to compare suicide rates in Colorado and Michigan (early adopters of tip line mobile applications and websites) to non-adopting states before and after the adoption of tip lines. Despite the existence of anecdotal evidence of tip lines saving many high-school students from committing suicides, I find little evidence that tip lines have reduced completed suicides among 14-to-18-year-old youths.Item The effect of air pollution on exam performance: a case study using California public high schools(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2018) Musser, Kyle James; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brock SmithThe California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) and natural variation in ambient air quality are used to estimate the effect of pollution exposure on exam performance. Two regularly monitored air pollutants, particulate matter PM2.5 and PM10 are used as measures of air pollution. A negative relationship between particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) exposure and decreased exam performance is found. The results, from models using school and year fixed effects, suggest high levels (two standard deviation increases from the mean) of PM2.5 and PM10 on exam days cause declines in average exam performance of roughly 2-6% of a standard deviation compared to exams taken during less polluted days. The estimated magnitude of these findings is slightly smaller, but within bounds of similar studies from high school aged students in Israel and the United Kingdom. This relationship is found to hold for students from both high and low socio-economic status and is not statistically different between students who are White, African American, Hispanic or Latino or Asian although results are not robust to the inclusion of district-by-year time trends for the math section of the exam. These findings highlight that pollution reduction efforts could have positive impacts to students and schools that are not traditionally considered in cost/benefit analyses.