Research data · Disease model and test

Sucrose preference test in anxiety research

From 2021 to 2025, 256 animal research papers on anxiety mentioned the sucrose preference test in their title or abstract.

That is 3.1 times the 83 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on anxiety that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 1.3 times as many.

256 papers on anxiety from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the sucrose preference test
8% of the papers on anxiety that mention any test mention the sucrose preference test
17% of the papers that mention the sucrose preference test are on anxiety
3.1 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on anxiety that mention the sucrose preference test, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

  • Papers in a full year
  • 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
Papers by year
YearPapers
20010
20022
20031
20042
20051
20062
20072
20089
20095
20107
20114
201216
201320
201422
201521
201635
201734
201832
201925
202037
202150
202257
202336
202449
202564
2026 (part year)51

Papers on anxiety that mention the sucrose preference test fell from 50 in 2021 to 36 in 2023, then rose to 64 in 2025. Part of this dip may come from PubMed's indexing rather than from fewer studies. Where PubMed has indexed a paper, we take its disease models from that indexing. Otherwise PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract, or the paper is not counted here. Papers that PubMed indexed under the subject heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025.

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 256 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Rat
137 papers 54%
Mouse
125 papers 49%
Other animals
1 paper under 1%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the species this chart names.

Tests mentioned alongside the sucrose preference test

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 256 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 12 (5%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

143 papers 56%
143 papers 56%
109 papers 43%
30 papers 12%
29 papers 11%
15 papers 6%
11 papers 4%
10 papers 4%
9 papers 4%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the sucrose preference test in its title or abstract, and studies anxiety.

We tell whether a paper studies anxiety from its MeSH terms, the subject headings the National Library of Medicine adds when it indexes a paper. For a paper without MeSH terms, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model. A paper that mentions the test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low.

The page on anxiety research names the subject headings we count as anxiety. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the sucrose preference test, or the paper list for the PubMed ID of every paper behind these counts. Our main page, Behavioral tests in published research, has the full method and each source's terms of use.

More tests and disease models

Every pairing of a disease model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.

The page on the sucrose preference test counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on anxiety research ranks the tests by their papers on anxiety.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Sucrose preference test in anxiety research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/resources/data/behavioral-tests/models/anxiety/sucrose-preference-test

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_anxiety_sucrose_preference_test_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Sucrose preference test in anxiety research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/resources/data/behavioral-tests/models/anxiety/sucrose-preference-test},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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