The association between parent educational attainment and adolescent sleep health

To examine the association between parent educational attainment and adolescent sleep duration, timing, and sufficiency, to better understand potential sleep health disparities and identify at-risk populations in order to combat the growing public health epidemic of adolescent sleep deprivation.

This cross-sectional study used data from a study of 9th grade students from two diverse high schools in Barrow County, Georgia, collected during the early spring semester of 2020. The primary outcomes of interest were student self-reported sleep duration, timing, and sufficiency, which was defined as students who reported getting enough sleep. Linear and logistic regressions were conducted for each of these outcomes, adjusted for race/ethnicity, sex, free/reduced lunch status, and whether the student's parents work traditional hours. Exposure was defined as the highest level of parent educational attainment.

A total of 405 students were included in this study. There was a statistically significant association between parental education and weekend sleep timing. In adjusted models, students whose parents did not finish high school had 0.2 times the odds of going to sleep before midnight than students whose parents received a graduate degree (95% CI [0.1, 0.6]), and students whose parents completed college had 0.4 times the odds (95% CI [0.2, 0.8]). Other sleep outcome measures were not found to be statistically significant.

The association between parent educational attainment and adolescent sleep timing demonstrates a potential area to identify at-risk students and reduce sleep health disparities to inform the development of equitable and effective sleep health interventions.