Irregular sleep and event schedules are associated with poorer self-reported well-being in US college students.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Sleep regularity, in addition to duration and timing, is predictive of daily variations in well-being. One possible contributor to changes in these sleep dimensions are early morning scheduled events. We applied a composite metric - the Composite Phase Deviation (CPD) - to assess mistiming and irregularity of both sleep and event schedules to examine their relationship with self-reported well-being in US college students. METHODS Daily well-being, actigraphy, and timing of sleep and first scheduled events (academic/exercise/other) were collected for ~30 days from 223 US college students (37% females) between 2013 and 2016. Participants rated well-being daily upon awakening on five scales: Sleepy-Alert, Sad-Happy, Sluggish-Energetic, Sick-Healthy, and Stressed-Calm. A longitudinal growth model with time-varying covariates was used to assess relationships between sleep variables (i.e., CPDSleep, sleep duration, and midsleep time) and daily and average well-being. Cluster analysis was used to examine relationships between CPD for sleep vs. event schedules. RESULTS CPD for sleep was a significant predictor of average well-being (e.g., Stressed-Calm: b=-6.3, p<0.01), whereas sleep duration was a significant predictor of daily well-being (Stressed-Calm, b=1.0, p<0.001). While cluster analysis revealed no systematic relationship between CPD for sleep vs. event schedules (i.e., more mistimed/irregular events were not associated with more mistimed/irregular sleep), they interacted upon well-being: the poorest well-being was reported by students for whom both sleep and event schedules were mistimed and irregular. CONCLUSION Sleep regularity and duration may be risk factors for lower well-being in college students. Stabilizing sleep and/or event schedules may help improve well-being.