Meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of the Trier Social Stress Test in Eliciting Physiological Stress Responses in Children and Adolescents

Abstract The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is known to reliably induce physiological stress responses in adult samples. Less is known about its effectiveness to elicit these responses in youth samples. We performed a meta-analysis of stress responses to the TSST in youth participants. Fifty-seven studies were included representing 5,026 youth participants. Results indicated that the TSST was effective at eliciting stress responses for salivary cortisol (sCort; effect size [ES] = 0.47, p =  .006), heart rate (HR; ES = 0.89, p