Social Factors in the Mental Health of Young Adults: Bridging Psychological and Network Analysis

• Conditions: Depression; Loneliness; Stress; Anxiety

• Registration Number: NCT04771195
• Lead Sponsor: Stanford University

Brief Summary

The central goal of this project is to produce a novel, precise, and comprehensive account of social factors in young adult mental health - using a novel combination of network nominations, ecological momentary assessment, and neuroimaging methods. To that end, the investigators will collect data from two successive classes of college undergraduates (i.e., classes of 2023 and 2024) over the course of their collegiate tenure.

Detailed Description

The proposed work will consist of four key components. The investigators will collect data from the class of 2023 in each of their remaining years at college, producing (i) longitudinal data that will allow them to probe the long-term mental health effects of connections made during the transition to college, as well as mental health issues and resilience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of social connectedness. The investigators will leverage this rich dataset to build (ii) prospective quantitative models to predict mental health outcomes later in college based on a range of social factors measured early in college. They will further collect (iii) a longitudinal replication cohort, the class of 2024, allowing to establish the robustness of their initial findings across samples. Finally, the investigators will add (iv) a neuroimaging component to this dataset in a subset of the class of 2024. This will allow them to examine brain "markers" of connectedness, and add them to a prospective model, providing a novel integration across brain, behavior, and community levels of analysis, and a synthetic assessment of social factors in long-term mental health.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2021-02-22
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-02-22
• Study First Posted: 2021-02-25
• Study Start: 2021-08-30
• Status Verified: 2022-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2022-05-11
• Last Update Posted: 2022-05-18
• Primary Completion: 2024-05
• Study Completion: 2024-05

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 2000

Inclusion Criteria

Stanford undergraduate students in the classes of 2023 and 2024, as well as all students who reside in their dorms.

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Exclusion Criteria

People under the age of 18

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Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Depression	September 2021 - May 2024	Score on self-reported depression measure: Center for Epidemiological Studies Scale - 10 item version. Range = 0 to 30. Higher scores indicate more depressive symptoms
Anxiety	September 2021 - May 2024	Score on self-reported anxiety measure: State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - 20 item version. Range = 20 to 80. Higher scores indicate more symptoms of anxiety.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Loneliness	September 2021 - May 2024	Score on self-reported loneliness measure: University of California Loneliness Scale - 8 item version. Range = 1 to 5. Higher score indicate greater feeling of loneliness.
Stress	September 2021 - May 2024	Score on self-reported stress measure: Perceived Stress Scale. Range = 1 to 3. Higher scores indicate greater feeling of stress.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Stanford University; 🇺🇸 Stanford, California, United States