Stressful Life Events and Its Effects on Educational Attainment: An Agent Based Simulation of the Process CS 460 December 8, 2005

What is it? Examines how stressful life events affect students’ educational progress and thus their final attainment level Simulate students’ development starting from birth Model students’ progression in school

Stress on Human Development Stress (from negative life events) and its affect on students education attainment not a direct path Stress affects a person’s motivation and performance The negative impact stressful life event have on a person depend their resilience (i.e., some may be less sensitive than others)

Model of Stress and Its Effect on Students’ Level of Educational Attainment Create a cohort of students Variables: Innate ability Internal resilience Level of motivation Performance = (innate ability + resilience + motivation) / 3 Performance is the sole predictor of educational advancement Randomness is introduced into the model to give it variation

Exogenous Variables Structural and Cultural Variables Socioeconomic status Gender Race Socioeconomic status is student variable and model as a mechanism to dissipate stress Gender and race are not included in the model currently because I am not sure how I want it to affect the process.

Number of Stressful Life Events Experience Stressful Event? Level of Stress Experienced Exceed Critical Stress Level? Decrease Motivation Maintains Above Average Performance? Exceed Critical Performance Level? Increase Resilience Move up the Education Ladder Event Stress Level Individual’s Resilience

Stages of Education or Development Infant Preschool Elementary Middle High School College Professional Doctoral

Setup Choose cohort size 0 – 1000 Choose normal or random distribution for main variables i.e., score on innate ability, resilience, motivation, socioeconomic status Choose number stressful events each year (turns out not to be very important) Choose probability that student a will experience stressful events at each stage of education (i.e., preschool, elementary, middle, high school…etc.) Choose critical stress level (determine the point when stress has a negative affect students’ performance in school) Choose motivation reduction level (if exceed critical stress level) Choose resilience enhancement level (if maintains above average level of performance Choose critical performance level to determine educational advancement Choose class effect

Plots and Counts Resilience Distribution Plot Motivation Distribution Plot Ability Distribution Plot Stress Distribution Plot Performance Distribution Plot Final Level of Educational Attainment Counter

Results – The View Given our rules, it is likely that those with high levels of resilience and ability will be able to sustain a higher level of stress without affecting their performance and thus reach a high level of educational attainment Several runs of the models show that this is indeed the case. Students with the least stress are much more likely to attain a higher level of education but a few students with high stress level were also able to make it to a higher level of attainment. Some students with little or no stress have lower levels of attainment due to a combination of low ability, resilience, or motivation.

Results - Plots and Counters Distribution on resilience skewed to the left Distribution on motivation skewed to the right. This is mainly an artifact of how we set up the rules and should be modified to allow for resilience to decrease and motivation to increase. Nevertheless, this is interesting as it suggests that given only stressful event, students regardless of their initial scores, tend to build up a level of resilience over time while motivation tends to decrease over time. Both tends to regress to the mean regardless of whether it starts out as a normal or random distribution. This is likely the case even if we allow for decreases in resilience and increases in motivation. If so, it would suggest that regardless of where you are at, overtime negative and positive forces may cause most students to have an average level of resilience and an average level of motivation.

Results - Plots and Counters Distribution of stress tend to take on a normal distribution over time Able to get a distribution of student educational attainment that are similar to current statistics using the sliders and the rules to get to the results seems logical.

Distributions of Variables by Levels of Attainment For students who attain at least a college degree or higher, some are highly resilience with above average level of stress. Note that this is due somewhat to the way I coded the rules. They also have somewhat higher levels of ability and performance. Their higher starting ability level may have provided a buffer to falling behind in school and allow them to build up their resilience over time.

Distributions of Variables by Levels of Attainment – Cont. For the few students who attained a professional and doctoral degrees, the graphs show high levels of ability, performance and low level of stress.

Class Effect Turns out in this model, it is not significant and do not change out results. Stress is not coded to have a cumulative effect. It is a one time shock that can reduce a student’s motivation, increase their resilience and affect their overall performance. Outside of these parameters, it has no effect so modeling stress dissipation really has not bearing on the result.

Performance Criteria, Motivation Reduction, and Resilience Enhancer Educational advancement in our model is based on performance. So critical performance level for the student population turns out to be main determinant of educational advancement. Regardless of how overall stressful life events affect students in general, overall distribution of the population attainment level is structurally determined by school’s performance criteria. Stressful events only affect your ability to compete and gain access to upper level of distribution. Students with least stress are more likely to attain higher levels of educational attainment.

Behavioral Space Distribution of educational attainment no real differences were found for distribution reason mentioned above Future Examination: Look at the differences between students at each stage of educational attainment i.e., ability, resilience, stress, motivation and performance

Is agent based simulation useful for social research? Gives some support to how stressful life events might affect students educational attainment through negative impact on motivation and positive impact on resilience (or at least it does not negate the theory) No major surprises and does what I expect Most important, helps you focus on specific aspect of your theory and eliminate variables that makes no difference in the outcome

Focus, Focus, Focus Help focus research questions Class as a stress dissipater: Does stress have any delayed impact or only initial affect? How do we model cumulative or delay effect of stress? Negative events Instead of looking for solutions to eliminate or prevent negative events, perhaps educators and development folks need to ask “How can we generate positive events for children to offset negative experiences?” Competition and inequality a reality. If there are structural barriers such as selectivity in schools and employment, someone is going to lose. Stratification cannot be rid of without large structural change Need to focus on process and individual change.