A Small, Exploratory Analysis of Fingernail Cortisol, Psychosocial Well-Being, and Social Support Among Undergraduate Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives

College students adjusted to a unique learning environment under the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Living on campus and participating in “hybrid” instruction demands, individuals experienced contexts that were often socially and psychologically demanding, with potential physiological implications. In this exploratory analysis, we tested for correlations between perceived psychosocial stress and potential stress-buffering processes with fingernail cortisol, a relatively new method for measuring cumulative cortisol production in prior months. We specifically drew on data collected from a small sample of university undergraduates living on campus during a pandemic-affected semester.

Methods

We conducted this study in the Spring of 2021 with University of Notre Dame undergraduate students (age 18–21 years, n = 41). We collected data on participants’ cortisol in the 3–5 months prior through sampling of fingernails. We also collected demographic, disposition, and psychosocial data, including participants’ perceived psychosocial stress, social support, sense of school membership, and satisfaction with the university’s COVID-19 response.

Results

We found non-significant positive associations for nail cortisol with recent perceived stress and neuroticism. Students had (non-significantly) lower nail cortisol if they reported greater social support or higher self-compassion. Finally, participants who were more satisfied with the university’s COVID-19 program had significantly lower nail cortisol. The 95% confidence intervals for these findings were wide and generally included zero, indicating imprecision in our data.

Conclusions

In this exploratory study, we found associations between participants’ fingernail cortisol that align in the predicted directions for using nail cortisol as a stress-related biomarker. The effect sizes for our results are small but are generally comparable to those for chronic stress and cortisol measured through other methods. Given the wide confidence intervals for our results, the findings should be considered preliminary. They may highlight the potential of investigating the role of fingernail cortisol as an indicator of chronic stress activation.