Sleep attitudes in adolescents: demographic differences and associations with sleep health

Abstract

About 70-90% of adolescents in the United States receive less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep on a nightly basis despite its importance in everyday functioning (Keyes et al., 2015). Health-related attitudes are modifiable and predict actual health behaviors and previous research suggests that there are differences in how people value sleep (Ruggiero et al., 2019). Although previous work has examined sleep attitudes in teenagers, this has yet to be examined quantitatively in relation to actual sleep behavior. The purpose of this study is to examine how adolescents prioritize sleep and how this relates to other sleep outcomes. Participants included 649 adolescents from the United States (ages 13-18, M = 16.2, SD = 1.08; female = 79.7%; white = 45.2%) and were recruited through advertisements distributed throughout Instagram. Participants completed a brief 15-minute online survey to assess sleep outcomes and sleep attitudes. Adolescents completed the Charlotte Attitudes Towards Sleep Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Sleep Timing Questionnaire, the Adolescent Sleep Hygiene Scale, the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status - Youth Version, and sociodemographics. A series of regression models were conducted examining sleep outcomes predicted by adolescent sleep attitudes while adjusting for sociodemographics. An additional regression model was conducted examining adolescent sleep attitudes predicted by perceived socioeconomic status while adjusting for sociodemographics. Results suggested that teens who reported more positive attitudes towards sleep also reported longer sleep duration, better sleep quality, shorter sleep latency, earlier weekday and weekend bedtimes, and better sleep hygiene. There were also no significant differences in sleep atttitudes across sociodemographics. Follow-up exploratory analyses examined the two sleep attitudes subscales as independent predictors and outcomes and the pattern of findings remained unchanged. This study helps address the lack of research surrounding sleep attitudes in an adolescent sample. Results showed that sleep attitudes significantly predict sleep outcomes, but no significant differences were found across sociodemographic groups once accounting for covariates. Overall, findings from this study advance research on sleep attitudes by examining attitudes in a youth sample and suggest that sleep attitudes are a possible modifiable target to minimize sleep health difficulties.