Systematic review of stress assessment in adolescents' daily lives

Stress is a major risk factor for mental disorders, many of which first emerge during adolescence. Given the proliferation of intensive longitudinal studies of stress in daily life, we systematically reviewed how stress is conceptualised, operationalised, and quantified in youths’ everyday lives (preregistration: https://osf.io/cxpmw). Two independent reviewers screened PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Embase, and preprint servers for intensive longitudinal assessment studies of stress in participants aged ≤25 years (published before July 2025). Data on design, measures, and sampling were extracted, and comparable results meta-analytically evaluated. Across 120 identified studies comprising 14,721 participants, study designs and stress measurement approaches showed substantial heterogeneity. Despite this, daily stress was consistently associated with depression (r = 0.26-0.37) and anxiety (r = 0.47). Emerging best practices and key gaps in the literature on daily stress in adolescents are highlighted.