How do you cope with stressful and traumatic life events? Join our research study

We need volunteers to help us research how personal characteristics can help individuals cope with stressful and traumatic life events.

This study will explore what helps people cope when they go through stressful or traumatic experiences.

We want to find out whether people who are more sensitive to stressful events around them are also more sensitive to physical signs of stress in their own bodies (like changes in heart rate or tension).

By taking part, you will help us build a clearer picture of the different factors that affect how people manage stress and protect their wellbeing. We hope our research will influence interventions that may help other people in the future.

Take part in this research study

The deadline to apply is 31 May 2027.

What you’ll do

During this research study, you will complete a survey session and a heartbeat-tapping task at one of our labs. Each task will take around 15 minutes.

The survey session will include several questionnaires covering exposure to stressful events, emotional processes and health.

For the heartbeat tapping session, you’ll tap on a button noting your heartbeats while wearing a heartbeat detection device (on your chest or wrist).

Eligibility

Taking part in this research study is entirely voluntary; you are free to make your own choice about whether you want to participate. If you agree to take part, you are free to withdraw at any time.

To take part in this research study, you must:

be at least 16 years old
understand written English and be able to participate in conversations in English

What you’ll get

After you have completed both the survey and heartbeat tapping sessions, you’ll receive £5.

Your data

We will treat all information that you provide as confidential and store it securely at the University of Bath in a locked room or temporarily on a password-protected file on the University’s secure server, as per the University of Bath’s guidelines for secure data storage of participant data and confidential data. No identifiable information will be recorded. Recorded data will be stored securely and confidentially in the University archives for a minimum of ten years. At the end of the project, the anonymous data will also be archived in a suitable research data archive, where the data can be shared openly when applied for by other researchers.