Abstract
A substantial body of research indicates that higher education students from lower social class backgrounds tend to have poorer health than those from higher social class back grounds. To investigate sleep as a potential mediator of this relationship, online survey responses of students from five large Australian universities, one Irish university and one large Australian technical college were analysed in three studies (Study 1 N = 628; Study 2 N = 376; Study 3 N = 446). The results revealed that sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep disturbances, pre-sleep worries and sleep schedule variability mediated the relationship between social class and physical and mental health. Sleep remained a significant mediator when controlling for related variables and other mediators. Thus, the findings suggest that sleep partly explains social class differences in health. We discuss the importance of addressing sleep issues among students from lower social class backgrounds.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 710-730 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | British Journal of Psychology |
| Volume | 114 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.