From salutogenic resources to objective stress phenotyping in university students
A critical narrative review of sense of coherence, lifestyle, and physiological measurement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67463/98e6e194Keywords:
sense of coherence, salutogenesis, academic stress, physiological monitoring, salivary biomarkers, wearable devices, university students, heart rate variabilityAbstract
Objective: To critically examine how sense of coherence (SOC), lifestyle, and objective physiological stress measurement can be integrated in university-student research without overstating the maturity of the evidence.
Methods of synthesis: This problem-oriented critical narrative review was anchored in a prior integrative review on SOC and lifestyle in university students and expanded through targeted searches in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar, supplemented by reference tracking. The search strategy combined controlled vocabulary, where available, and free-text descriptors related to four blocks: student populations; salutogenesis and lifestyle; academic stress and mental health; and physiological or digital stress measurement, including wearables, HRV, sleep, passive sensing, salivary biomarkers, stress detection, machine learning, and sensor-supported interventions. Literature from 2015 to 2025 was prioritized, while foundational salutogenesis sources were retained for conceptual grounding. Studies were selected when they clarified the target population, stress label, physiological endpoint, device or biomarker protocol, analytical strategy, or implementation constraint relevant to multimodal stress phenotyping.
Main findings: Direct evidence in university students supports associations among stronger SOC, more favorable lifestyle profiles, and lower psychological distress. Parallel evidence shows that sleep, cardiorespiratory signals, passive sensing, salivary cortisol, and total antioxidant capacity may characterize aspects of stress physiology; however, their interpretability depends on temporal alignment, stress-label validity, device and pipeline transparency, pre-analytical control, and participant adherence. The link between SOC and physiological endpoints is therefore best treated as an integrative inference requiring direct validation.
Conclusion: The most defensible contribution of the field is not the demonstration of a validated causal chain from SOC to biomarkers, but the formulation of auditable methodological conditions for future multimodal studies that analyze psychosocial resources, behavioral exposures, and physiological endpoints within the same observation window.
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