Self-reported sleep status and influencing factors: a web-based national cross-sectional survey in China

Abstract

Objectives

To investigate self-reported sleep duration, sleep timing, sleep status and influencing factors in the Chinese population.

Methods

This web-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2022, covering 31 provinces (91%) in China. 11,000 questionnaires were collected, of which 8970 were valid for analysis. Self-reported sleep habits, problems and quality were investigated. Good or fair sleep ratings, enough duration, regular, with no sleep disturbances and <30 min sleep latency was defined as a composite variable: ‘Good sleep’. Factors influencing sleep patterns and ‘Good sleep’ were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression.

Results

Most participants sleep less than 7 h per night (55.13%), usually go to bed at 10–12 pm (47.99%), wake up at 6–8 am (49.86%), and take less than 30 min to fall asleep (66.30%) with regular sleep schedule (76.01%). Only 12.36% have ‘Good sleep’. In the past 3 months, 46.80% of the participants reported symptoms of insomnia, and 21.54% had snoring problems. Among the adults, the young, males, college students, freelancers, and those who resided in urban areas and pandemic-free areas slept later, and the northerners woke up earlier. The adults with low-moderate and moderate income and the minors at elementary and middle school slept earlier and woke up earlier. Mid-aged adults who often napped at noon were more likely to have ‘Good sleep’ than any other age group, and urban dwellers with the same habit were more likely to have ‘Good sleep’ than people dwelled in other regions. While people who slept late, woke up too early or too late, slept too little or too much, resided at GMT 7–8 area or pandemic area, had high income, or took up some occupations (entrepreneurs/individuals, professionals, manual and non-manual workers, housewives) were less likely to get a ‘Good sleep’.

Conclusions

The national survey provided a sleep profile of the Chinese population. Both socio-economic status and personal sleep hygiene habits had an impact on ‘Good sleep’.

Keywords:

• Sleep
• sleep duration
• sleep quality
• sleep health

Acknowledgment

The authors were grateful to sleep research institute of DeRucci for their help in questionnaire distribution, collection and data entry.

Ethical approval

Our study did not require an ethical board approval because this was a completely voluntary study with no interventions, clinical examinations, or sampling.

Our study did not require informed consent form because this was an anonymous survey, and the respondents did not provide information that could identify their ID.

This was a survey conducted by the China Sleep Research Society which did not have an ethics institute. Peking University and Fudan University had ethics institutes, but they cannot apply for ethics for a project that was not entirely led by them. This study was systematically designed to achieve privacy protection without ethical implications: a survey that was anonymous, voluntary, did not involve the collection of information that clearly identifies individuals, and did not violate the Helsinki Principles and their bylaws. This project was non-interventionist, required only privacy protection, and was not disseminated to people other than the researchers, who in fact did not even know who they are. Besides, the Helsinki Principles and their bylaws were essentially medical ethics, while this project was not strictly medical research. Therefore, we did not have ethical approval.

Authors contributions

Xuemei Gao, Zhili Huang and Heming Zuo were involved in the conception of the study. Wanxin Zhang, Min Yu, Ying Xu and Xiaoqing Li were involved in the data analysis and drafting the manuscript. All authors were involved in the interpretation of the findings. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript and agree to be held accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Anonymized data are available upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any funding.