During the summer I started to brainstorm topics for my AP Research project, considering a range of different topics for it. I thought about studying things like the impact of pollution on soil and how reliance on funding impacts research. These ideas emerged from a desire to help, finding data that could be useful for others, not just something I found personally interesting. Eventually I settled on doing research into something to do with economics, as it affects everyone in our country every day, and seemed like an area where new research could make a significant impact.
My previous research in AP Seminar focused on the use of nostalgia in political rhetoric, and I wanted to find a topic with a similar impact on people's lives. Economics aligned with this perfectly, as it not only is a topic that has a major impact on people's lives, but is a topic that relies on data collection, something I was wanting to gain experience in. I also had a group project on school phone policies during AP Seminar, which made me interested in public policy, something that economics is closely aligned with.
I started by looking at the effect of supply side economics, wanting to better understand its effects on general life in the last few decades, but I quickly realized that such a topic was very broad and would need to be narrowed down. I then focused specifically on health care, wanting to cover the effects of claim denial on success rates. I found that this topic was not only broad, but would be difficult and ethically questionable to collect data through surveys like I was planning to. Staying on health care, I changed my focus to health insurance costs and plans between regions. This was focused on variations between regions, as I wanted to find more about the effect of regional culture and opportunity on health coverage.
After having my topic reviewed, I decided to focus my work on educators in Colorado specifically, as this narrow scope would make data Collection much more reasonable. I found educators to be a great occupation to look at because it is a job that is not only necessary for each district, but is also an occupation that often receives a low salary, making reduced rates on insurance more important.
Many different studies have helped to shape my view on this topic, and they helped show me methods to collect data. I found that while many of them used surveys to collect data, many did not, relying on other studies and data analysis to reach their conclusions. I decided that this would be the best method to collect data because it would make collection more efficient, as well as reducing bias as the data will be public and objective, not collected from potentially biased educators.Â
One study I found that greatly influenced my methodology was a 2023 study into geographic variation in health insurance coverage. The study found that states that did not expand their Medicaid coverage had much lower rates of public insurance and higher rates of people being uninsured. What caught my eye was how the study used many stratifications to divide up data, making distinctions more obvious. They grouped different states into regions which they compared, and this made the data easier to understand. I will replicate this in my research, splitting the state into different regions. This will be done because different regions may have significantly different coverage based on factors like development and proximity to hospitals and clinics.
My methodology consists of multiple components being:
Sorting each school district in Colorado into one of 4 groups: Front Range, Western Slope, East Plains, and Central Mountains. I will then randomly choose 5 districts from each grouping in order to find 20 district to use. This stratified random selection process will be done because there are 173 school districts in Colorado, and it is unrealistic to collect data from all of them. Also, if this data is collected quickly, I will randomly choose more districts from these regions, allowing for flexibility with my data collection.
Create a spreadsheet for all of my data. I will then go to each of the district's websites to seek out their health plans, putting their data into the sheet. This data will then be collected into graphs to show proportional differences between them. This will allow for organization and a standardized set of data points to consider, making the found data comparable.
Compare the collected data on coverage to the relative incomes and cost of living in the areas collected from. This will help put into context how the data actually affects educators, making the data much more useful.
The truth about health insurance is that prices are much too expensive, with costs rising by thousands of dollars a year over the last decade. Furthermore, insurance is absolutely necessary for some families, as a medical emergency can place them into bankruptcy and block them from receiving certain expensive forms of care that may be necessary to save their lives. By collecting this data on health coverage, educators may be better able to understand how their employer coverage works, and will have more information on which regions provide better care, saving thousands of dollars and possibly even lives.