Sleep duration and subjective psychological well-being in adolescence: a longitudinal study in Switzerland and Norway

Abstract

Background

Adolescents’ sleep duration and subjective psychological well-being are related. However, few studies have examined the relationship between sleep duration and subjective psychological well-being longitudinally across adolescence – a time of profound biological and psychosocial change. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate whether shorter sleep duration in adolescents is predictive of lower subjective psychological well-being 6 months and 12 months later or whether lower subjective psychological well-being is predictive of shorter sleep duration.

Methods

Adolescents (age range, 10.02–15.99 years; mean age, 13.05±1.49 years; 51.8%, female) from German-speaking Switzerland (n=886) and Norway (n=715) reported their sleep duration and subjective psychological well-being on school days using self-rating questionnaires at baseline (T1), 6 months (T2), and 12 months from baseline (T3).

Results

Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses revealed that sleep duration decreased with age. Longer sleep duration was concurrently associated with better subjective psychological well-being. Crossed-lagged autoregressive longitudinal panel analysis showed that sleep duration prospectively predicted subjective psychological well-being while there was no evidence for the reverse relationship.

Conclusion

Sleep duration is predictive of subjective psychological well-being. The findings offer further support for the importance of healthy sleep patterns during adolescence.

Keywords:

• adolescence
• sleep duration
• psychological well-being
• international
• longitudinal study

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (NFP-33: Nationales Forschungsprogramm 33; project number: 4033-35779). We thank August Flammer, Françoise Alsaker, Walter Herzog, and Wilhelm Felder who acted as principal investigators of the study, and the NFP33 Study Team for data collection and data entry. The study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (principal investigators: August Flammer, Alexander Grob, Françoise Alsaker, Walter Herzog, Wilhelm Felder). We also thank Nick Emler (University of Surrey, UK) for proofreading the manuscript. Finally, we thank the adolescents in Norway and Switzerland as well as their parents for participating in this study and contributing to its success.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.