# Project 1 - Changes in Daily Stress and Well-Being

> **NIH NIH U19** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2020 · $216,252

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The objective of the MIDUS Daily Diary Project is to determine how short term fluctuations in daily stress
processes impact longer-term health and well-being throughout midlife and later adulthood. Specific aims are:
(1) To assess changes in multiple aspects of daily stressors and daily well-being across three occasions
spanning 20 years; (2) To investigate how daily stress processes disrupt diurnal rhythms of salivary cortisol
and alpha amylase; and (3) To enhance data from the MIDUS cognitive project by adding new assessments of
everyday cognition: unconstructive repetitive thinking (intrusive thoughts) and memory failures. These aims will
be addressed by conducting the third wave of longitudinal data collection from participants who participated in
the previous MIDUS I & II Diary. The longitudinal sample will consist of 1000 individuals selected from the
MIDUS random digit dialed (RDD) participants and 200 participants from the African-American Milwaukee
sample. The collection protocol will continue to use an 8-day telephone diary study of daily stressors and well-
being combined with multiple assessments of saliva (4 occasions × 4 days) to ascertain salivary cortisol and a
new biomarker for this project: salivary alpha amylase (sAA). The MIDUS Daily Diary Project will continue to
incorporate the rich measures (sociodemographic, personality, cognitive) obtained in other MIDUS projects in
our analyses to study how they relate to changes in daily stress processes. This project will also use
information obtained from the biomarker, gene expression and neuroscience projects to examine how changes
in daily stress processes predict changes in various indicators of health (e.g., allostatic load, inflammatory
processes, neuroendocrine regulation, cardiovascular risk).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9955135
- **Project number:** 5U19AG051426-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** CAROL D. RYFF
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $216,252
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** — → 2022-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9955135

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9955135, Project 1 - Changes in Daily Stress and Well-Being (5U19AG051426-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9955135. Licensed CC0.

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