A New Population-scale Approach for the Study of Psychological Stress in the Transition to Adulthood: 2022-ongoing

SUMMARY

Hair-based cortisol provides a reliable measure of brain-experienced stress levels for the three months directly preceding the collection of a hair sample. However, the field currently has no carefully studied protocol for large-scale hair collection and no information about the selection biases likely to result from self-collection rather than professional collection. This study will overcome the obstacle by using a large, randomized experiment to assess options for the integration of hair-based cortisol measurement into population-scale studies; and compare the self-collection of hair for cortisol to the professional collection.

OBJECTIVES

1. Develop, test, refine, and launch population-scale collection protocol (self-collection vs. professional-collection) of a biomarker of psychological stress (hair sample).
2. Analyze across both arms the success of collecting hair, the quality of the hair samples, and subject self-evaluation of the process
3. Conduct descriptive analyses comparing the two experimental conditions.

METHODOLOGY

Research design

It is a longitudinal cohort study of a representative sample of 1,500 respondents (randomized into 1,000 self-collections and 500 professional collections) from the CVFS panel aged 18-22 who were interviewed in the 2016-18 CVFS mental health survey and web survey of adolescents; who have not used steroid medications in the past 3 months.

Data collection

The instruments, protocols, and hair collection kits replicate tools used for successful professional hair collection protocols in U.S. national surveys conducted by SRC. Respondent recruitment, eligibility screening, and consenting are done by phone. A trained interviewer visits the subject’s home on the scheduled collection date, collects the hair sample, and administers the evaluation survey for professional-collection whereas, self-collection respondents collect their own hair sample using a hair sample collection kit and instructions delivered to their home; and take the evaluation survey via phone. Successful-collection survey is administered to subjects who provide a hair sample, else, Failed-Collection Survey is administered.

Pilot testing

Pilot tests are conducted for both self- and professional-collection processes with subjects from outside of the CVFS sample to refine the protocols and instruments.

Cortisol extraction

It is done under the partnership of SRC/ISER-N with the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN). CMDN completes quality inspections, extracts cortisol, and provides these measures via electronic data file transfer.

OUTCOME

Data

Data will be available upon completion.

Publications

No publications yet.