Can Sleep Facilitate Adaptation for Immigrant High Schoolers? Longitudinal Relations Between Sleep Duration, Acculturative Stress, and Acculturation

Rising rates of youth migration are occurring globally and, thus, the adaptation of immigrant youth to their host country’s cultural norms is a pressing public health concern. Indeed, both acculturation and acculturative stress are associated with mental health for immigrant youth. The broad aim of this study was to examine how sleep duration would prospectively relate to acculturation (Short Acculturation Scale) and acculturative stress (Social, Attitudinal, Familial, and Environmental Acculturative Stress Scale) following migration for N = 110 immigrant high school students across 1 year. We hypothesized that acculturation would increase, and acculturative stress would decrease over the course of 1 year of data collection. We found evidence of both anticipated longitudinal changes, with significant slope parameters that were of opposite direction (i.e., acculturation positive, acculturative stress negative). Longer sleep duration at baseline was predictive of both greater increase in acculturation and greater decrease in acculturative stress over 1 year.