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Inducing and Recording Acute Stress Responses on a Large Scale With the Digital Stress Test (DST): Development and Evaluation Study.


ABSTRACT:

Background

Valuable insights into the pathophysiology and consequences of acute psychosocial stress have been gained using standardized stress induction experiments. However, most protocols are limited to laboratory settings, are labor-intensive, and cannot be scaled to larger cohorts or transferred to daily life scenarios.

Objective

We aimed to provide a scalable digital tool that enables the standardized induction and recording of acute stress responses in outside-the-laboratory settings without any experimenter contact.

Methods

On the basis of well-described stress protocols, we developed the Digital Stress Test (DST) and evaluated its feasibility and stress induction potential in a large web-based study. A total of 284 participants completed either the DST (n=103; 52/103, 50.5% women; mean age 31.34, SD 9.48 years) or an adapted control version (n=181; 96/181, 53% women; mean age 31.51, SD 11.18 years) with their smartphones via a web application. We compared their affective responses using the international Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short Form before and after stress induction. In addition, we assessed the participants' stress-related feelings indicated in visual analogue scales before, during, and after the procedure, and further analyzed the implemented stress-inducing elements. Finally, we compared the DST participants' stress reactivity with the results obtained in a classic stress test paradigm using data previously collected in 4 independent Trier Social Stress Test studies including 122 participants overall.

Results

Participants in the DST manifested significantly higher perceived stress indexes than the Control-DST participants at all measurements after the baseline (P<.001). Furthermore, the effect size of the increase in DST participants' negative affect (d=0.427) lay within the range of effect sizes for the increase in negative affect in the previously conducted Trier Social Stress Test experiments (0.281-1.015).

Conclusions

We present evidence that a digital stress paradigm administered by smartphone can be used for standardized stress induction and multimodal data collection on a large scale. Further development of the DST prototype and a subsequent validation study including physiological markers are outlined.

SUBMITTER: Norden M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9338415 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Inducing and Recording Acute Stress Responses on a Large Scale With the Digital Stress Test (DST): Development and Evaluation Study.

Norden Matthias M   Hofmann Amin Gerard AG   Meier Martin M   Balzer Felix F   Wolf Oliver T OT   Böttinger Erwin E   Drimalla Hanna H  

Journal of medical Internet research 20220715 7


<h4>Background</h4>Valuable insights into the pathophysiology and consequences of acute psychosocial stress have been gained using standardized stress induction experiments. However, most protocols are limited to laboratory settings, are labor-intensive, and cannot be scaled to larger cohorts or transferred to daily life scenarios.<h4>Objective</h4>We aimed to provide a scalable digital tool that enables the standardized induction and recording of acute stress responses in outside-the-laboratory  ...[more]

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