Sleep in Farm Adolescents

The objectives were to: (1) describe sleep timing and patterns among adolescents who live or work on farms; (2) compare these sleep characteristics to those of nonfarm adolescents; (3) explore whether the above sleep and farm versus nonfarm differences varied by age and gender.

Participants were aged 11-16 years and were abstracted from the 2014 Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study. Records from 2,160 farm adolescents were frequency matched (by school, gender, and grade) to records from 2,210 nonfarm adolescents. Participants self-reported their bedtimes and wake-up times on weekdays and weekends.

Among farm adolescents, average nightly sleep duration (hours:minutes) ranged from 08:34 among 14- to 16-year-old girls to 09:21 among 11- to 13-year-old girls. Approximately 24% to 32% of farm adolescents did not meet minimal sleep duration targets. For 11- to 13-year-olds, sleep characteristics did not differ according to farm status. However, for 14- to 16-year-olds, farm adolescents had shorter sleep durations than nonfarm adolescents (23 minutes for boys, P = .02; 20 minutes for girls, P = .06). Furthermore, a greater proportion of 14- to 16-year-old farm boys had sleep duration values less than the recommended 8 hours/night (27.7% vs 19.6%, P = .05).

This study profiles the sleep experiences of 11- to 16-year-old farm adolescents. Almost 1 in 3 of these adolescents did not get adequate sleep. Older adolescents who lived or worked on a farm slept less than comparably aged nonfarm adolescents. This may reflect their participation in morning chores essential to the farm operation and may increase their injury risk.