Long-term Academic and Psychosocial Impact of Child's Sleep: Parental Influences
Long-term Academic and Psychosocial Impact of Child's Sleep: Parental Influences
The proposed longitudinal project aims to understand parental influences on children's sleep and will investigate the effect of sleep-related parental factors - (1) parents' value of their children's sleep relative to other activities, (2) parental involvement in setting children's sleep habits and enforcing good sleep hygiene, and (3) parent's own sleep habits - on school-age children's sleep, mental health, socio-emotional resilience, and academic/cognitive performance. It will also investigate the impact of social economic status on these sleep -related parental factors.
Parents can influence their children's sleep in various ways. However, existing studies on parental factors of school-aged children's sleep have seldom moved beyond sleep hygiene and the relationships between parent and child's sleep patterns. A potential factor that has been overlooked is parents' value of their children's sleep - whether they value their children's sleep and prioritise it over other activities, e.g. studying or watching TV. Another variable to consider is the social economic status (SES) of the household, which can influence these parental factors.
The proposed longitudinal project will investigate the impact of SES on several sleep-related parental factors and the effects these parental factors have on children's sleep, mental health, socio-emotional resilience, and academic/cognitive performance. The project will involve school-age children in Singapore (baseline age: 7-12 years) at two time points, time 1 (T1) and time 2 (T2), one year apart.
At each timepoint, children's sleep will be assessed with actigraphy for 1 school week. This will be followed by a lab visit during which sleep-related parental factors, as well as the children's sleep, academic and cognitive performance, socio-emotional resilience, and mental health will be assessed. Lab visits will be scheduled at the end of the school week in the morning and early afternoon so that neurobehavioural functions can be captured during typical school hours.
Investigators hypothesise that parents from low SES households will value their child's sleep less, and therefore, allow their child to trade a larger amount of sleep for other activities. Parents from low SES households will also enforce good sleep hygiene less, and sleep less themselves. Children from low SES households will thus have shorter sleep duration, more sleep disturbance, poorer mental health, poorer socio-emotional resilience, and poorer academic and cognitive performance.
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
The reverse of the inclusion criteria