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

项目总结 人群规模的心理压力测量在向成年过渡期间通常是一致的。 对自我报告的测量或仅反映大脑最近几个小时反应的生物标记物感到紧张 压力。最近在利用头发获得稳定的皮质醇测量方面取得的突破-皮质醇是一种免疫功能的生物标志物。 对人脑的压力契约--有可能使这门科学发生革命性变化。基于头发的皮质醇提供 一种可靠的测量大脑在采集毛发前三个月的压力水平的方法 样本。现在可用于头发皮质醇分析的实验室方法可用于 普通人口研究。像其他一些生物标志物一样，头发可以由研究参与者收集-- 极大地降低了将这种测量添加到人口规模研究中的成本。然而， 菲尔德目前还没有认真研究大规模毛发收集的协议，也没有关于Se-Se-Se的信息。 选择偏向可能源于自我收集，而不是专业收集。 我们将通过使用大型随机实验来评估整合选项来克服这一障碍 将基于头发的皮质醇测量纳入人口规模研究。本实验中，比较了自我采集的 头发用于皮质醇专业收集，将被整合到一个长期的家庭小组研究与现有 来自社区、家庭、父母和个人的压力和成年过渡的预测因素 年轻人。这些措施将支持对自我收集中的选择偏差进行全面评估 头发样本。我们将随机将1,448名年龄在18-21岁的受访者分配到两个手臂的实验中进行比较 自我收发到专业收发。分析将检查成功收集头发的质量， 头发样本，以及参与者对过程的自我评价。我们将把这些成果的衡量标准与 数以千计现有的衡量个人生活中一段时间的事件，他们父母的生活， 其他家庭成员，以及当地社区的背景。分析将以探索所有措施为特色 确定任何与拒绝参与、遵守自我收集、头发质量有关的因素 样本，或对毛发采集方案的不良反应的自我报告。 这些分析的结果将提供建立大规模毛发为基础的限制的手段 皮质醇自我收集。我们将设计一种最佳协议，将基于头发的皮质醇收集整合到POP- 在各种环境中进行模拟研究，并向公众发布该协议。我们还将存档这些创新的 ICPSR的皮质醇测量和收集程序，使所有研究人员能够推出创新的新肛门- 成人过渡过程中的心理压力。在本次R21结束时，我们团队将提出 R01-使用这一新协议将新冠肺炎之前的心理健康与冠状病毒感染期间的压力联系起来的规模研究- 19时代的人从成年过渡到求爱、婚姻、避孕和生育的轨迹。

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 new protocol to link mental health before COVID-19 and stress during COVID- 19-era transitions to adulthood to trajectories of courtship, marriage, contraceptive use, and childbearing.