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Sleep as a mediator of the relationship between social class and health in higher education students

McGuffog, Romany; Rubin, Mark; Boyes, Mark; Caltabiano, Marie L.; Collison, James; Lovell, Geoff P.; Muldoon, Orla; Paolini, Stefania

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Authors

Romany McGuffog

Mark Boyes

Marie L. Caltabiano

James Collison

Geoff P. Lovell

Orla Muldoon



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 backgrounds. 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.

Citation

McGuffog, R., Rubin, M., Boyes, M., Caltabiano, M. L., Collison, J., Lovell, G. P., …Paolini, S. (2023). Sleep as a mediator of the relationship between social class and health in higher education students. British Journal of Psychology, 114(3), 710-730. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12645

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 22, 2023
Online Publication Date Mar 9, 2023
Publication Date 2023-08
Deposit Date Mar 24, 2023
Publicly Available Date Mar 24, 2023
Journal British Journal of Psychology
Print ISSN 0007-1269
Electronic ISSN 2044-8295
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 114
Issue 3
Pages 710-730
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12645

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Early View © 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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