What would be the easiest, cheapest way for me to measure stress levels for my science experiment?

Question

Stress causes the brain to siganl the release of stress hormones, one of which being adrenaline/epinephrine. Adrenaline increases heart rate as part of the 'fight or flight' responce to stress. Would the easiest and cheapest way for me to measure stress be to measure heart rate? What device would i need? Where would i get the device, how much would it cost, etc.?

Thank you!

if it helps, I'm testing how different sounds affect the stress levels in humans.

Answer 1

Take the pulse rate. Place three fingers gently on the front of the thumb side of the wrist just before the hand and count for thirty seconds.

Answer 2

Just an idea..

When someone is stressed (depending on their surroundings) they might start to sweat. If you could hook a simple circuit up, with a 9volt battery and light and break in the circuit, you could attach either end of the break to the person's finger (or other place where they might sweat). The idea being that when the person is sweating, the sweat will conduct the electricity and cause the light to come on. The intensity of the light could be related to how much sweat they are producing which could then be linked to their stress level.

Or you could measure their heatrate (how many beats/min) just by listening to their pulse at various times during the experiment. The places where they have the highest pulse rate would be the places where they are the most stressed. Lots of fitness places have heart rate measures, if you ask around (or search online) you should be able to find a budget one in your price range.

Of course, both of those tests aren't the most accurate as not everyone has the same resting heartrate and sweat glands. An even simpler way to go about it would just to be ask them how stressed they are at any given time.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

If you want a device to count the pulse for you, get an inexpensive blood pressure cuff (make certain that it has this feature, the pulse, or heart rate).

The previous poster is correct, you can do it with a watch with a second hand and your own fingers. But I remember this being difficult for me to do at first, until I had practiced for a while. So, if you need it, a thirty dollar BP cuff will serve your present needs, and when you're done, be useful to check your blood pressure as well.

But I have doubts about the pulse being an indicator of stress of all types. It might be an indicator of how alarmed somebody became when you sneaked up behind them and clapped. But for everyday stress, like a deadline, I think that you'll need some kind of questionaire or survey, which also happens to be cheaper than a BP cuff. Not all stress is represented by a surge in adrenalin.

There's one that the psychiatrists use called the HAM-A (http://www.anxietyhelp.org/information/hama.html) that you might add to your armamentarium. You might make your own scale usng that one as a model if it's not quite right for your purposes.

Answer 4

I was thinking along the lines of Sam, but with a simpler way to detect sweat. Get a few sheets of high quality stationery and with a pencil, divide one into, say, 2 inch squares. Coat the subject's index finger with dilute iodine and allow to dry. Press the finger onto a paper square. After a few controls, press the finger onto a square after each stress. Increased sweat in the pores of the fingertip will dissolve a small amount of the iodine which will react with the starch in the paper to produce tiny dark blue dots.

This won't work with cheap paper!

Answer 5

Many science fairs exclude animal experimentation, the kind that would induce stress could be considered cruelity.

Vit C is considered a 'stress' vitamin, since the levels of vit C fall in the adrenal gland when a rat has its legs broken.

Answer 6

Get a neodymium magnet that's a cylinder 3/8 X 3/8 inch. additionally get a copper tube a million/2 inch inner diameter approximately 2 feet long. you need to describe why it takes approximately 2 seconds for the magnet to drop in the process the tube.