EVALUATION OF THE IMPACT OF EDUCATION POLICIES ON STUDENT OUTCOMES AND HEALTH BEHAVIOR

Author

Ibrahima Coulibaly, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2020

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Agricultural Sciences

First Advisor

Asirvatham, Dr. Jebaraj

Abstract

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OFIbrahima Coulibaly, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Agricultural Science, presented on March 25, 2020, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EVALUATION OF THE IMPACT OF EDUCATION POLICIES ON STUDENT OUTCOMES AND HEALTH BEHAVIORMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Jebaraj Asirvatham Two essays in this dissertation examine the impact of education policies on student achievement, and enrollment. The third essay focuses on the association of health communication campaigns along with the targeted social health indicator and health behavior changes. In all chapters, the data are on a yearly time horizon and cover the data obtained from Southern Illinois University of Carbondale archives, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and secondary data survey from the Department of Human Services (DHS) database. Chapter 2 data are from a randomized survey done on Southern Illinois University students to measure students' educational outcomes after getting eBook tablets in a pilot program done by Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The pilot program started in Fall 2013 and the research work aimed to evaluate if tablets increase students’ achievements. This study investigated the effects of eBook tablets on higher education students' achievements using propensity score matching. This study shows a positive value of eBook tablets distributed to the incoming university students in terms of a cumulative increase of GPA over the total four undergraduate years. Therefore, universities and colleges across the United States could benefit by implementing more student-centered policies using technology like eBook tablets.Chapter 3 studies the impacts of the tuition guarantee program “Truth-in-Tuition” on university enrollments. The data is aggregate at the university levels from 2000-2017. Two universities from the state where policy was in place was compared to two universities from the state where there was no such policy. Date was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) website. Two nationally ranked universities (Southern Illinois Universities of Carbondale, and Illinois University at Chicago) were chosen from Illinois, and two randomly chosen regional universities (Southeast Missouri State University and Murray State University) from neighboring states (Missouri and Kentucky). A Difference-in-Difference method along with state and regional fixed effects is used. The findings of chapter 2 show that Truth-in-Tuition contributes more to the decline in national research extensive universities than regional universities.Chapter 4 studies the impact of health campaigns along with socio-economic health indicators on Rwandan households. It reports log-odds and likely behavioral changes made post AIDS campaign using logistic regression. This chapter uses the DHS household-level social health determinants such as education and health behavior, along with survey questions related to household health campaigns and health behavior changes after hearing about AIDS from 2005 to 2017. This study’s hypothesis is that health campaigns such brochures, flyers, posters, and newspapers, along with the health social determinants such as household education level, assets, literacy, sex of head of household, and health exposure to AIDS, have a positive impact on household behavior changes towards AIDS. The findings of this study show the interaction of health campaigns such as brochures/poster exposures, along with the educational attainment and household health exposure seems to be big contributors to changes in household behavior after hearing about AIDS in Rwanda.