Quiet Time, Quiet Biology: Does a School-based Meditation Intervention Impact Stress Biomarkers?

This proposal seeks funding to collect biological stress data from 480 students participating in an existing randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a school-based meditation intervention called Quiet Time (QT), which seeks to understand how meditation affects student mood, behavior and academic performance. This grant would allow us to examine whether QT affects students’ biological stress system activity, including acute levels and daily rhythms of salivary cortisol and salivary alpha amylase (sAA); whether effects are greater for students exposed to higher rates of violence and chronic stress; and whether stress biomarkers are associated with student academic and criminal justice outcomes.