With spring comes pollen season –affecting many people who suffer from allergies or hay fever.
Hay fever symptoms resemble that of a common cold with plenty of sniffing and sneezing, runny noses and itchy, watery eyes making spring a very uncomfortable season for hay fever sufferers.
Hay fever is especially bad for asthma sufferers as it tends to exacerbate asthma symptoms causing breathing problems.
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Allery sufferers may get tired and lose concentration despite allergy medication which causes a lot more of the same symptoms as side effects.
Pollen has also been known to affect cognitive performance in around 20% of the population and Simon Bensnes at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Department of Economics studied this very effect of pollen on exam performance in secondary school students.
According to the study, pollen can have a negative result on the exam results of students with hay fever. This can have a huge impact on their future and subsequent career paths.
Bensnes investigated the results of the year-end written exams from the period 2008-2011. According to Norway’s asthma and allergy federation approximately 25 to 30 per cent of Norwegian young people suffer from pollen allergies and a majority of those affected are boys.
The researcher linked this data to each exam location and date as well as to information relating to pollen count on the given exam day.
He also compared individual exam performance on days students experienced different pollen counts but he did not have any information regarding which students suffered from hay fever.
The results from the study clearly showed that exposure to pollen affected exam performance in students with pollen allergies.
When the pollen count increases by one standard deviation, which is 20 pollen grains per cubic metre, there was a decrease in the exam grade by 2.5 per cent.
The study also showed that one in ten pupils dropped a grade when pollen count increased by one deviation, assuming that those who did not suffer from hay fever are not affected by pollen increase.
This indicates that students who suffer from pollen allergies may get poorer results than those who do not suffer from such allergies.
Taking other variables into account such as weather and air pollution the researcher found that this effect was more in boys than girls.
Bensnes tried to track this effect into higher education as well. The students in the study had four exams each during the spring semester and about 15 per cent of the grades constituted their graduation requirements.
The researcher then investigated if the students in the study were pursuing any higher education upon completing their upper secondary schooling, and if so, whether they started their studies in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) which traditionally have higher entrance grade requirements.
This was important as pollen levels can be critical for exam results and thus for their future education plans.
The findings suggest that random pollen increase affected the exam scores of pollen allergy sufferers compared to non-sufferers. This affects their subsequent study opportunities as they are competing with non-sufferers for the same university slots.
Bensnes concluded that allergy sufferers are denied the same opportunity to study what they want at a university not because their skills are inferior but because they suffer from hay fever during their exams.
Hay fever is one of those conditions sufferers have to live with and find ways to deal with it either with natural remedies or medication. But when its exam time – even these helpful aids might fall short in helping students doing well in their tests by keeping the symptoms away.
Maybe with the findings of this study, suggestions can be made for no exams during pollen season.
Source: Journal of Health Economics
