For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.

Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.

Abstract

School climate has been described as a crucial predictor of students’ outcomes, including their sense of belonging and overall wellbeing, school engagement, attendance, grades, test scores, and graduation rates. However, most of this literature relies on identifying “risk factors” from cross-sectional associations, or on estimating the effects of particular school climate interventions in small samples. By contrast, the recent “causal turn” in the study of school climate has shifted the focus to identifying the causal effect of adverse school conflict events, such as peer-to-peer victimisation and bullying, which have been shown to be highly consequential for students’ later trajectories. 

In this project, I aim to contribute to this emerging literature by identifying the causal effect of exposure to school conflict on students’ outcomes, using a difference-in-differences design based on Chilean administrative records. I constructed a longitudinal dataset covering the full population of Chilean students for a decade (2014–2024), containing 135K official complaints filed against schools. I show that school conflict escalates quickly, and that students exposed to conflict have lower attendance even before a formal complaint is filed against the school. After a complaint is filed, students withdraw from school, an effect that persists over a six-month follow-up period. I conclude with some reflections on the challenges of causal inference with difficult-to-measure and self-reported exposures.