Daily associations between sleep and stress : moderation by dysfunctional beliefs about sleep

Abstract

The present study aims to study the reciprocal relationship between sleep quality and stress level at the daily level, and it aims to evaluate if dysfunctional sleep beliefs moderates this relationship. A sample of 172 college students have completed a baseline questionnaire which measured their baseline sleep quality, baseline stress levels and dysfunctional sleep beliefs. Among the 172 participants, 60 of them were randomly selected to attend a four-consecutive weeks daily diary study, with one participant dropped out. Multilevel modeling analysis was conducted to examine the association between daily stress and sleep, as well as the moderation effect of dysfunctional sleep beliefs. The results supported a reciprocal relationship between sleep quality and stress on a daily basis. Interestingly, stress did not predict sleep quality at between-level as in previous studies. Nevertheless, current results did not support the moderation effect of dysfunctional sleep beliefs on the relationship between sleep and stress. Possible explanations on these findings and limitations of current study were discussed.