School Connectedness and Chinese Adolescents' Sleep Problems: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

Although previous research indicates an association between school connectedness and adolescents' sleep quality, its causal direction has not been determined. This study used a 2-wave cross-lagged panel analysis to explore the likely causal direction between these 2 constructs.

Participants were 888 Chinese adolescents (43.80% boys; M_age = 15.55) who provided self-report data on school connectedness and sleep quality as well as demographic variables at the beginning and the end of a school year.

After controlling for sex and age, we found that sleep problems at the beginning of the school year were a significant and negative predictor of school connectedness at the end of the school year (b₂ = -.26, SE = .13, β₂ = -.10, p < .05), but school connectedness at the beginning of the school year did not predict sleep problems at the end of the school year (b₁ = .05, SE = .03, β₁ = .09, p > .05). Separate analyses by sex showed that the above pattern of results was mainly driven by the boys.

Our findings demonstrated that sleep problems could be a risk factor for adolescent boys' school connectedness.