Resilience
Using wearable devices to understand stress levels
Partners
When are we most stressed?
Catholic Education WA wanted to understand the times and circumstances in which their employees experienced stress. They engaged Telethon Kids Institute and Reach HPI to help them find out.
Collecting detailed self-reports and instrumental health data has long been a challenge in health interventions, requiring expensive equipment and often experiencing high participant attrition, as users struggle with onerous self-reporting requirements.
In-the-moment data with minimal user effort
Wearable devices, like smart watches, provide a new opportunity to collect timely, in-the-moment data with minimal participant burden. Reach HPI developed Resilience, a new data collection tool using an app for Apple Watch.
Study participants received notifications throughout the day, and could provide anonymous feedback on their perceived stressed levels in seconds, without interrupting what they were doing.
Health data with no user effort at all
In addition to in-the-moment responses, Resilience automatically collected anonymised health data such as exercise levels and time spent sitting and standing.
This enabled powerful comparisons with participants’ self-reported stress levels, and opened the door to insights into how employers can nurture healthy, low-stress workplaces.