Household Chaos Mediates the Link Between Family Resources and Child Sleep
Open Access
- Author:
- Trexberg, Kaitlin
- Graduate Program:
- Human Development and Family Studies
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 28, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Douglas Michael Teti, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Sunny Bai, Committee Member
Charles Geier, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- Transition to kindergarten
household chaos
sleep duration
family resources - Abstract:
- This study examined the mediational role of household chaos in the link between family resources and child sleep outcomes during the transition to kindergarten. Participants included 230 families of children entering kindergarten (50% female) who participated in an eight-day measurement burst at pre-kindergarten (July-August), early kindergarten (September/October), and mid-kindergarten (November-December). At pre-kindergarten, mothers completed the Family Resources Scale-Revised (FRS-R; Van Horn et al., 2001), while trained observers assessed household chaos using the Descriptive In-Home Survey of Chaos-Observer ReporteD (DISCORD; Whitesell et al., 2015) at pre- and early-kindergarten. In order to better understand perturbations in child sleep during this transition, actiwatches (AW Spectrum Plus, Philips/Respironics, Inc.) were used to measure both child sleep duration and proportion of optimal sleep duration (9+ hours per 24-hour period; Paruthi et al., 2016) at early- and mid-kindergarten. Results found that family resources were more clearly predictive of child sleep outcomes than household income. Controlling for quality of coparenting and maternal depressive symptoms, household chaos fully mediated the link between family resources and child sleep duration at both early and mid-kindergarten and the link between family resources and the proportion of optimal sleep duration in mid-kindergarten.