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

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2021 · $234,000

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Population-scale measurements of psychological stress during the transition to adulthood are generally con-
strained to either self-reported measures or biomarkers that reflect only recent hours of brain response to
stress. Recent breakthroughs in the use of hair to obtain stable measures of cortisol—a biomarker for the im-
pact of stress on the human brain—has the potential to revolutionize this science. Hair-based cortisol provides
a reliable measure of brain-experienced stress levels for the three months directly preceding collection of a hair
sample. Laboratory processes for cortisol analysis of hair are now available at a scale that can be used for
general population research. Like some other biomarkers, hair could be collected by study participants them-
selves, greatly lowering the costs of adding such measurement to population-scale research. However, the
field currently has no carefully studied protocol for large-scale hair collection, and no information about the se-
lection biases likely to result from self-collection rather than professional-collection.
 We will overcome this obstacle by using a large, randomized experiment to assess options for integration
of hair-based cortisol measurement into population-scale studies. This experiment, comparing self-collection of
hair for cortisol to professional-collection, will be integrated into a long-term family panel study with existing
predictors of stress and the transition to adulthood from neighborhoods, households, parents, and individual
young adults. These measures will support comprehensive evaluation of the selection bias in self-collection of
hair samples. We will randomly assign 1,448 respondents aged 18-21 to two arms of an experiment comparing
self-collection of hair to professional-collection. Analyses will examine success collecting hair, the quality of the
hair sample, and the participant’s self-evaluation of the process. We will link measures of these outcomes to
thousands of existing measures of events over time in the individuals’ own lives, their parents’ lives, the lives of
other household members, and the local community context. Analyses will feature exploration of all measures
to identify any that are associated with refusal to participate, compliance with self-collection, quality of the hair
samples, or self-reports of adverse responses to the hair-collection protocols.
 Results from these analyses will provide the means to establish the limitations of large-scale hair-based
cortisol self-collection. We will design an optimal protocol for integrating hair-based cortisol collection into pop-
ulation studies across settings and release that protocol to the public. We will also archive these innovative
cortisol measures and collection procedures at ICPSR, allowing all researchers to launch innovative new anal-
yses of psychological stress in the transition to adulthood. At the conclusion of this R21, our team will propose
R01-scale research using this ne...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10369850
- **Project number:** 1R21HD104993-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** William G. Axinn
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $234,000
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10369850

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10369850, A New Population-scale Approach for the Study of Psychological Stress in the Transition to Adulthood (1R21HD104993-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10369850. Licensed CC0.

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