Information on Cortisol Collection
One of the parts of the study that you’ll do at home is cortisol collection. We’re going to ask you to provide four saliva samples each day for two days. The first sample should be provided right when you wake up, the second 30 minutes after the first, the third 30 minutes after that, and the fourth 12 hours after you woke up.
You will be sent home from the visit with a cortisol kit. The kit contains:
- Two ziploc bags labeled “Day 1” and “Day 2,” each with 4 empty tubes
- A blue bottle with a cap containing 8 white swabs
- An extra tube with a swab
We’ll also send you home with a Cortisol Instruction and Questionnaire packet, a cortisol timing worksheet. If you look at the tubes, you’ll see that they are labeled with your participant number, and the day and time that they should be used at. If you look closely, you’ll see that we’ve also put colored dots on the tubes – these dots match up to dots on the cortisol questionnaires so you can make sure you are using the correct tube at the correct time. It’s really important to use the correct tube for each sample, so please be very careful to do that.
Please find detailed instructions for cortisol collection here: Instructions for Cortisol Collection