Stress modelling using transfer learning in presence of scarce data

Abstract

Stress at work is a significant occupational health concern nowadays.Thus, researchers are looking to find comprehensive approaches for improving wellness interventions relevant to stress. Recent studies have been conducted for inferring stress in labour settings; they model stress behaviour based on non-obtrusive data obtained from smartphones. However, if the data for a subject is scarce, a good model cannot be obtained. We propose an approach based on transfer learning for building a model of a subject with scarce data. It is based on the comparison of decision trees to select the closest subject for knowledge transfer. We present an study carried out on 30 employees within two organisations. The results show that the in the case of identifying a “similar” subject, the classification accuracy is improved via transfer learning.