Elsevier

Sleep Health

Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2016, Pages 211-218
Sleep Health

Sleep duration and patterns in adolescents: correlates and the role of daily stressors

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2016.05.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Objectives

The first aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of sleep deficit in a large sample of adolescents. Second, the study aimed to assess whether short sleep duration in the sample was associated with emotional and behavioral problems. Lastly, the study aimed to investigate the association between daily stressors–bedtime activities and sleep duration.

Design

Cross-sectional survey.

Setting

The questionnaires were completed during school hours in 17 municipal junior high schools in Sweden.

Participants

A total of 2767 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years, 48% girls.

Measurements and Results

Sleep measures included total sleep time (TST) for schooldays and weekends, obtained as combined measures of self-reported bed-time, wake-time, and sleep onset latency. We used the new National Sleep Foundation's guidelines to operationalize sleep duration. Overall 12% of younger adolescents (age 12-13 years) and 18% of older adolescents (14-16 years) slept less than recommended (TST < 7 hours). Adolescents reporting nonrecommended TST also reported more behavioral (ie, norm-breaking behaviors) and emotional problems (ie, depression, anxiety, and anger), with effects in the small-medium range. Finally, adolescents reporting bedtime arousal and use of information and communication technology in bed were more likely to report TST < 7 hours. Stress at home (for younger adolescents) and stress of school performance (for older adolescents) were also associated with TST less than 7 hours.

Conclusions

The new National Sleep Foundation's recommendations were informative in this context. Future sleep interventions need to target barriers to good sleep practices, such as use of information and communication technology, stress, and worry that may contribute to arousal at bedtime.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

The participants were high school students in seventh and eighth grades (age range, 12-16 years) from 17 public schools in 3 communities in middle Sweden. The target sample included a total of 3336 students. The consent procedure required active consent from students and passive consent from parents due to the fact that passive consent can increase participation rate and limit sampling bias.27, 28 All parents received a letter informing them about the study; overall, 122 parents declined having

Sample characteristics

The sample included 2768 adolescents, 48% of were girls and 43.3% were 12 to 13 years old. For the distribution of depressive symptoms, anxiety, anger, norm-breaking behaviors, sleep hygiene, ICT in bed, and daily stressors among boys/girls and adolescents aged 12-13/14-16 years (see Table 1).

Age and sex differences in weekdays sleep patterns

Of the younger adolescents (age 12-13 years), 58.1% reported optimal TST, 29.6% reported borderline TST, and 12.3% reported sleeping more or less than recommended (> 12 hours [0.2%] and < 7 hours [12.1%],

Discussion

In this study, we aimed to assess sleep duration and patterns in a Swedish sample of adolescents. We divided our sample into younger (age 12-13 years) and older (age 14-16 years) adolescents according to the NSF's sleep recommendations26 and found that 12% of the younger and 18% of the older adolescents reported sleeping less than 7 hours per night. The prevalence of poor sleep duration was lower than reported by previous studies, which ranges between 24% and 73%3, 4; however, this could be due

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that Swedish adolescents report similar sleep patterns to adolescents from other cultural backgrounds and a similar association between sleep deficits and emotional and behavioral disturbance. The new NSF recommendations appear useful in this context, and using these guidelines consistently would facilitate comparison between studies and improve our knowledge about sleep in adolescents. Our findings also suggest that there may be an association between daily stressors and

Disclosures

None of the authors of this paper has a financial or personal relationship with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias the content of the paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Forskningsrådet Formas, Forskningsrådet för Arbetsliv och Socialvetenskap (FAS), Vetenskapsrådet, and Vinnova.

We thank Dr John Barnes for providing help in language editing.

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