Insufficient Sleep Across Racial/Ethnic Groups Over Time

Abstract

Insufficient sleep can negatively impact individuals on social, academic, medical, and societal levels. However, there are gaps in the literature regarding the relationship between sleep averages and racial/ethnic groups across time. This study assessed the longitudinal relationships between racial/ethnic groups and reported sleep scores in a national sample. Data (n = 2,427) was collected from five waves of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Data analysis showed that reported sleep averages decreased across all five waves for almost every racial/ethnic group (from 7.92 hours to 6.73 hours). Furthermore, the data showed that Whites tended to report higher sleep score averages than Hispanics, while Hispanics tended to report higher sleep score averages than ‘Other’ race/ethnicity members and Blacks. In the end, over two thousand participants’ responses were considered, and bivariate correlations revealed small but significant effects. These results suggest that the connections between sleep insufficiency, race/ethnicity, and age groups are deserving of further investigation.