Poster #88 - Household Chaos as a Mechanism Linking Socioeconomic Risk and Poor Child Sleep

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - Interdisciplinary Section

Integrative Statement

Although relations between socioeconomic risk and poorer child sleep is well-known (Gellis, 2011), mechanisms that explain these links are unclear. Measures of SES often vacillate between employment, education, household income, and neighborhood quality, all of which are marker variables that do not capture specific environmental or family processes that explain their impact on children. We propose that household chaos/family disorganization may be a fruitful mechanism that can explain linkages between socioeconomic risk and child sleep. This premise receives support from prior work demonstrating that preschoolers from disadvantaged households were more likely than preschoolers from middle-class environments to have inconsistent bedtimes (Hale et al., 2009), and that inconsistent bedtimes, which are characteristics of chaotic environments, are predictive of poor child sleep (Staples et al., 2015),

The present study addressed this question during a pivotal time, the transition to kindergarten, a period of time during which sleep duration may be particularly important for successful school entry. 106 families of children were recruited prior to the start of kindergarten into a study on parenting, child sleep, and school functioning. Mothers completed the Family Resources Scale-Revised (FRS-R) (vanHorn et al., 2001) and provided information on yearly family income during the summer before kindergarten. Additionally, the Descriptive In-Home Survey of Chaos-Observer ReporteD (DISCORD; Whitesell et al., 2015), was assessed by trained observers at all time points (Summer, September/October, November/December, and April/May during kindergarten). At each timepoint, actigraph assessments of child sleep-wake activity were provided by AW Spectrum Plus actiwatches (Philips/Respironics, Inc.), which the children wore on their wrists for a week. Following pediatric recommended sleep guidelines, a minimum of 9 hours of sleep a night for school-age children (ages 6-12) (Paruthi et al., 2016), children were classified at each time point as either (1) meeting the recommended minimum duration of sleep by getting at least 9 hours of sleep per night across the full week, or (2) not meeting this recommendation by sleeping less than 9 hours on one or more nights across the week.

Correlational and partial correlational analyses, depicted in Table 1, revealed that children at each time point who met recommended guidelines for good sleep duration were in less chaotic families than children who did not meet recommended guidelines (ps < .05). Notably, family resources and family income also showed sporadic zero-order associations with child sleep. However, partial correlations revealed that when household chaos was statistically controlled, associations between child sleep and family resources and between child sleep and family income disappeared. In addition, household chaos’s association with child sleep remained (ps < .05) even after statistically controlling for family resources and family income, with the exception of the April time point, when DISCORD’s partial correlation with child sleep approached significance (p = .10).

These results support the premise that household chaos may be a mechanism by which socioeconomic risk impacts the likelihood that children making the transition to kindergarten regularly obtain adequate sleep. Additional formal mediational analyses will examine this question at specific time points and longitudinally across the kindergarten year.

Authors

• Kaitlin Marie Fronberg, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Corey Jean Whitesell, Penn State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brian Crosby, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Orfeu M. Buxton, Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Douglas Teti, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author