Pre-Covid Sleep Predicts Sleep Quality During the Pandemic: The Exacerbating Role of Stress and Loneliness

• In Event: Sleep During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence Among Youth, Adolescents, and Parents

Abstract

Sleep is a critical bio-regulatory process that facilitates the growth of cognitive functioning during adolescence (Dahl &Lewin, 2002). With over 970,000 deaths in the U.S. since the widespread transmission of the COVID-19 virus, youth are experiencing increased rates of stress, anxiety, and insecurity about health. During this unprecedented crisis, we expect that the youth's sleep problems will worsen. Specifically, COVID-19-related stressors and loneliness may be particularly harmful to sleep among youth already experiencing sleep problems before the pandemic. The present study first examines whether COVID-19-related stress and loneliness exacerbate the links between pre-COVID sleep and sleep quality during the pandemic. Second, we aim to determine gender differences in these associations.
This study used a longitudinal sample of youth (N = 126; Mage at T1 = 12.9). The first wave of the study took place before the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic (January 2018 to early March 2020), and the second wave of data was collected during the Covid-19 pandemic (from May to October 2020), which was explicitly designed to capture participants’ experiences of Covid-19 related stress and adjustment during the pandemic. The sample’s racial-ethnic composition was 78.8% European American, 11.5% African American, 3.8% Latino(a), 1.0% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 4.8% Other. Youth’s sleep problems were assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI, Buysse et al., 1989), a widely used self-report instrument that produces a global (i.e., total) sleep quality score consisting of seven component scores (i.e., subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbance, use of sleeping medications, and daytime dysfunction). Youth-reported Covid-19-related stress was measured using the Covid-19 Adolescent Symptom & Psychological Experience Questionnaire (Ladouceur, 2020). Three questions assessing youth’s negative affect, uncertainty about the future, and stress associated with routine disruptions were used. The UCLA loneliness questionnaire measures youth loneliness. Multigroup SEM models were used to test gender differences in how COVID-19-related stress and loneliness moderated the associations between pre-COVID sleep and sleep problems during the pandemic (adjusting demographic covariates including race, gender, age, and puberty status).
Pre-COVID sleep predicts sleep quality during the pandemic for the girls, but boys (β = .53, p < .001; β = .18, p >.05; respectively). Increased COVID-19 related stress and loneliness significantly moderated the links between pre-COVID sleep and sleep problems during the pandemic among boys (Covid-19 related stress: β = .43, p < .001; loneliness: β = .39, p < .05). We did not find significant associations among girls.
Our results show there is a gender difference in how COVID-19-related stress and loneliness impact sleep problems among youth. Our results highlight the urgency to develop prevention and intervention programs to provide coping strategies/resources that mitigate family and adolescent stress and attendant sleep problems while considering how this stress might influence boys and girls differently. Future research should also aim to extend these findings by investigating the role of gender in the associations between Covid-19 stress and adolescents’ sleep problems.

Authors

• Linhao Zhang, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author

• Rabeeh Azarmehr

• Cory Carvalho, University of Georgia

• Brooke Friedman

• Avary Ionie Evans, University of Georgia

• Assaf Oshri, University of Georgia