Anxiety is a mental disorder affecting over 40 million adults in the United States, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. The cause of this disorder can vary from person to person. To better understand one possible cause, Ariel Rosencrantz studied the correlation between food allergies and anxiety.
To collect data, Rosencrantz created an Institutional Review Board-approved survey and posted it onto the crowdsourcing marketplace known as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).
“Patient demographics were obtained using a questionnaire that included age and other medical comorbidities,” said Rosencrantz. “The survey asked participants ages 18 years and older to report medical symptoms of anxiety, but did not query if these conditions were physician-diagnosed.”
Upon receiving more than 1,000 survey responses, Rosencrantz used both the Spearman Correlation and an unpaired student’s “T-test” to analyze the data. The Spearman Correlation tests the association between two variables, while an unpaired student’s T-test compares the averages of two groups or populations.
“The Spearman Correlation was used to assess relationships between medical and psychosocial data,” she said. “The unpaired student’s T-test compared two groups: one being the number of food allergies, and the other being the number of food allergy symptoms.”
Rosencrantz referred to the Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scores, a 21-item self-reported inventory that assesses common symptoms of anxiety over a one-week period, to measure the correlation between anxiety and food allergies. Her results showed a possible connection.
“The major finding of my research was that the number of food allergy symptoms correlates more closely to anxiety than the number of food allergies,” she said. “Therefore, recognizing the number of food allergy symptoms may help discover the severity of anxiety in individuals with food allergies.”
Rosencrantz put months of hard work into her project, which would eventually earn her a fourth-place award in Best of the Behavioral & Social Sciences category at the prestigious Regeneron Westchester Science & Engineering Fair.
Moreover, she offered a special thanks to her classmates in the Science Research Program and Program Director Jeff Wuebber.
"I would like to thank Mr. Wuebber and my classmates in the Science Research Program at New Rochelle High School for giving me the opportunity to express my interest in science in this supportive forum."
Using the skills she learned through this experience, Rosencrantz plans to study biology in college and pursue a career in immunology.