2024/02/19 by Peter Neigel, Andrew Vargo, Neigel, Peter +5
Medicine · Psychology · #Color perception and design #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #Ergonomics and Musculoskeletal Disorders #FOS: Computer and information sciences #H.5.0 #Infrared Thermography in Medicine #J.3
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.11823
openalex publication_date 2024/02/19 · openalex created_date 2024/02/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.