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Addressing North Carolina’s Child Hunger Crisis by Examining the Relationship between Food Insecurity and Educational Attainment: A Quantitative Study

Dissertation
2025

Repository

Description

The purpose of this quantitative study was to test if there is a relationship between food insecurity and graduation rates among North Carolina students. This study collected secondary data from the Household Pulse Survey, and North Carolina Cohort Graduation Rates to represent food insecurity and graduation rates in North Carolina respectively. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient is used to analyze and determine if the variables above are related, using the ShapiroWilk testing methods to test if the datasets represent a normally distributed population. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient revealed a weak negative correlation (Pearson r = -0.23997), however, the probability value found the results to not be statistically significant (p-value = 0.760028). Additionally, the Shapiro-Wilk test revealed that both datasets represented a normally distributed population, with p-values of 0.24249 for the Household Pulse Survey and 0.1033 for the North Carolina Cohort Graduation Rates, respectively. Although empirical findings argued food insecurity plays a significant role in students’ ability to perform academically, the data findings suggested food insecurity is not the sole social determinant in educational attainment. Future research should consider alternate methodologies to gain additional insight into the true relationship between food insecurity and hunger, employ longitudinal research designs, conduct policy and economic analysis targeting food insecurity, evaluate the behavioral and psychological effects of food insecurity, examine school-based health programs, and address the threats to validity found in this study’s findings.
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Record Data:

Program :
  • Doctor of Education
Location :
  • CBE
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