Electrodermal Activity (EDA) for Stress Detection: A Comprehensive Survey and Benchmark

Abstract

Electrodermal activity (EDA) is widely used for pervasive stress monitoring because of its sensitivity to sympathetic arousal and its computational efficiency. However, research remains fragmented: studies concentrate on a small subset of available datasets, preprocessing and evaluation protocols are inconsistent, and widely adopted methodological conventions remain unvalidated. Existing reviews summarize these practices without evaluating them under a common protocol. To bridge these gaps, this paper presents a comprehensive survey and benchmark for EDA-based stress detection. We review the technical pipeline from preprocessing to modeling and compile 26 public datasets and 22 representative unimodal studies to inform future dataset selection and methodological design. Under a subject-independent protocol spanning five diverse datasets, we benchmark decomposition, filtering, and channel-input choices alongside a broad range of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models in both in-domain and cross-domain transfer settings. Our results provide the first multi-dataset validation of cvxEDA, the default decomposition method, show that feature-based ML outperforms end-to-end (E2E) DL, and identify ecological validity as a key factor in cross-domain transfer. We conclude with directions toward robust, data-efficient, and trustworthy deployment.