Mehar Chhatwal
Pronouns: He/him
Research Mentor(s): Justin Heinze, Assistant Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 6 (4pm-4:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 16
Presenter: 6
Abstract
The goal of the Sandy Hook Promise is to improve the lives of students by increasing safety and comfort in both schools and the broader community. The program achieves this through the implementation of the Say Something Program, which encourages students to report troubling or abnormal behaviors to the administration before situations spiral out of control. To gather results for further analysis of the effectiveness of the Say Something and Sandy Hook Promise programs, numerous surveys have been conducted on students and teachers involved in the process. Furthermore, interviews have been conducted on administrators inquiring about the ease of implementation and use of the program throughout the school year. These results have been collected across some of the largest school districts in the U.S., including LA and Miami-Dade counties. Although the program is still in effect and results are being collected in real-time, certain conclusions about the effectiveness of the program can already be drawn with data from previous waves of students. Overall, after using STATA and SPSS software to conduct data analysis, it is evident that rates of depression and violence, along with feelings of unsafety, all decrease amongst students after the program has been present for over a year. This shows clear evidence that the program truly does have a positive impact on students’ safety. This research is extremely valuable, as protecting our future generations is amongst the top of our priorities, especially when they are in educational spaces. After numerous threats to student safety following school shootings such as Sandy Hook, programs such as this one have a chance to truly improve the school environment and the lives of students as they seek to better themselves through education.
Authors: Mehar Chhatwal, Justin Heinze
Research Method: Survey Research
