Identifying Periods of Cyclical Stress in University Students Using Wearables In-the-Wild

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that wearable devices can unobtrusively detect cyclical stress patterns in university students, especially during exam periods and culturally significant times, enabling privacy-preserving mental health monitoring.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method for identifying group-wide stress biomarkers using wearable data over 28 months, highlighting specific cyclical stress periods in students' academic calendar.

Findings

Increased stress markers during exams, New Year's, and job hunting season.

Wearable data can detect stress without compromising individual privacy.

Potential for real-time, in-situ mental health monitoring in student populations.

Abstract

University students encounter various forms of stress during their academic journey, including cyclical stress associated with final exams. Supporting their well-being means helping them manage their stress levels. In this study, we used a wearable health-tracking ring on a cohort of 103 Japanese university students for up to 28 months in the wild. The study aimed to investigate whether group-wide biomarkers of stress can be identified in a sample having similar daily schedules and whether these occurrences can be pinpointed to specific periods of the academic year. We found population-wide increased stress markers during exams, New Year's, and job hunting season, a Japanese job market peculiarity. Our results highlight the available potential of unobtrusive, in-situ detection of the current mental state of university student populations using off-the-shelf wearables from noisy data, with significant implications for the well-being of the users. Our approach and method of analysis allows for monitoring the student body's stress level without singling out individuals and therefore represents a privacy-preserving method. This way, new and sudden stress increases can be recognized, which can help identify the stressor and inform the design and introduction of counter measures.