Literature v3 · Research topic
Does your community's poverty and healthcare affect how school SEL programs help teen mental health?
Imagine two schools with the same SEL program but very different outcomes—could the difference be the poverty level or healthcare access in their communities? Let's find out using public data.
Why this matters
Imagine a school district where SEL programs thrive, yet some students still struggle. Could the missing piece be the community around them—poverty, healthcare gaps, or gender norms? By weaving together CDC PLACES and NSCH data, we can uncover how place and gender shape the success of mental health promotion, offering a roadmap for targeted interventions without leaving the classroom.
Project scores
Difficulty
This project involves analyzing existing survey datasets (CDC PLACES and NSCH) using statistical methods to examine how county-level factors like poverty and healthcare access influence the link between school SEL programs and youth mental health. Over 8 weeks, you'll learn to merge datasets, conduct regression analyses, and interpret interaction effects. Prerequisites include basic statistics and
3 of 5 difficulty
Strengths
- Strong use of publicly available, large-scale datasets
- Addresses a timely and policy-relevant question
- Integrates social determinants of health with education research
Skills built
Zero-cost data
Zero-cost dataResearch gap
Imagine a school district where SEL programs thrive, yet some students still struggle. Could the missing piece be the community around them—poverty, healthcare gaps, or gender norms? By weaving together CDC PLACES and NSCH data, we can uncover how place and gender shape the success of mental health promotion, offering a roadmap for targeted interventions without leaving the classroom.
Curriculum alignment
Unlock the full research scaffold & literature chain
Sign in to open competition fit, the complete milestone roadmap, admissions narrative drafts, and the full research write-up for this topic.