Violence, Psychological Stress and Educational Performance

Question 1

what is Salardi’s research question

Answer 1

is psychological stress caused by exposure to violence an important mechanism linking violence to reduced educational performance

Question 2

what are the secondary research questions

Answer 2

• are acute short term effects or prolonged effects better explanatory tools for the relationship between violence and reduced educational performance
• does spatial and temporal proximity of homicides to schools have an impact on exam performances and if so, to what effect?

Question 3

what is salardi’s supply side hypothesis

Answer 3

the relationship is driven by declining quality in education
- violence -> destruction of school capacity -> educational perfomance

Question 4

what is salardi’s demand side hypothesis

Answer 4

the performance of students independently decline as a result of violence
- violence -> independent mechanism -> educational performance

Question 5

what is salardi’s core hypothesis

Answer 5

acute stress functions as the mechanism linking educational performance and violence, a demand side mechanism

Question 6

how is conflict operationalized in salardi

Answer 6

not operationalized as civil conflict onset, but operationalized as a continuous variable through recorded instances of homicide
- also is an independent variable

Question 7

how does Salardi measure educational performance

Answer 7

uses the results of the ENLACE standardized exams (administered at the primary and secondary levels)

Question 8

how does salardi calculate proximity to schools

Answer 8

• geomatch data on homicides with educational performance at nearby schools
• they map a series of concentric circles around each school they observe with a radii of 2km, 5km, and 10km, and count homicides in these circles in two ways

Question 9

what is salardi’s radius based method

Answer 9

within the overall covered by each circle

Question 10

what is salardi’s ring based method

Answer 10

within each individual ring of the circles (0-2km, 2-5km, 5-10km)

Question 11

Salardi has three thresholds for

Answer 11

violence
- 3, 5, or 7 homicides

Question 12

Salardi’s paper aims to estimate the

Answer 12

impact of violence in the 7 days prior to exams on exam scores to isolate the effect of acute psychological stress on educational performance

Question 13

results for the frequency of violence per ring

Answer 13

• 9.11% experienced three or more homicides within a 0-2km ring
• 9.73% of schools experienced three or more homicides within a 2-5km ring
• 17.19% of schools experienced three or more homicides within a 5-10km ring

Question 14

results for radii for table 1

Answer 14

highly significant negative relationship between violence and educational performance when school fixed effects are controlled for

Question 15

results for rings for table 2

Answer 15

• larger effect of homicides on exam scores when they are closer to the school for every violence threshold
• larger changes in the magnitude of effect at a higher threshold of violence

Question 16

results for table 3 - grade and subject

Answer 16

• significant negative relationship between violence and educational performance with a more substantial effect on math scores than for Spanish scores
• there is a slightly greater effect of violence on educational performance for younger students
  - most noticeable when comparing students in grades 3 and 4 with 6

Question 17

for salardi the causal mechanism

Answer 17

is acute psychological stress in the immediate aftermath

Question 18

four findings for salardi

Answer 18

• regressing homicides on education performance shows a negative causal relationship
• homicides in closer rings have a higher impact on exam performance than further ones (proximity effect)
• 7 day and 9 month threshold show that the impact of violence is highest in the immediate aftermath
• strong support for hypothesis that violence negatively impacts educational performance through psychological stress