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Childcheckpoint series
Research
Sleep: population epidemiology and concordance in Australian children aged 11–12 years and their parents
  1. Lisa Matricciani1,2,
  2. Francois Fraysse1,
  3. Anneke C Grobler2,3,
  4. Josh Muller2,
  5. Melissa Wake2,3,4,
  6. Timothy Olds1,2
  1. 1 Sansom Institute, Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  2. 2 Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
  3. 3 Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
  4. 4 Department of Paediatrics and The Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  1. Correspondence to Professor Melissa Wake; melissa.wake{at}mcri.edu.au

Abstract

Objectives To describe objectively measured sleep characteristics in children aged 11–12 years and in parents and to examine intergenerational concordance of sleep characteristics.

Design Population-based cross-sectional study (the Child Health CheckPoint), nested within the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

Setting Data were collected between February 2015 and March 2016 across assessment centres in Australian major cities and selected regional towns.

Participants Of the participating CheckPoint families (n=1874), sleep data were available for 1261 children (mean age 12 years, 50% girls), 1358 parents (mean age 43.8 years; 88% mothers) and 1077 biological parent–child pairs. Survey weights were applied and statistical methods accounted for the complex sample design, stratification and clustering within postcodes.

Outcome measures Parents and children were asked to wear a GENEActive wrist-worn accelerometer for 8 days to collect objective sleep data. Primary outcomes were average sleep duration, onset, offset, day-to-day variability and efficiency. All sleep characteristics were weighted 5:2 to account for weekdays versus weekends. Biological parent–child concordance was quantified using Pearson’s correlation coefficients in unadjusted models and regression coefficients in adjusted models.

Results The mean sleep duration of parents and children was 501 min (SD 56) and 565 min (SD 44), respectively; the mean sleep onset was 22:42 and 22:02, the mean sleep offset was 07:07 and 07:27, efficiency was 85.4% and 84.1%, and day-to-day variability was 9.9% and 7.4%, respectively. Parent–child correlation for sleep duration was 0.22 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.28), sleep onset was 0.42 (0.19 to 0.46), sleep offset was 0.58 (0.49 to 0.64), day-to-day variability was 0.25 (0.09 to 0.34) and sleep efficiency was 0.23 (0.10 to 0.27).

Conclusions These normative values for objective sleep characteristics suggest that, while most parents and children show adequate sleep duration, poor-quality (low efficiency) sleep is common. Parent–child concordance was strongest for sleep onset/offset, most likely reflecting shared environments, and modest for duration, variability and efficiency.

  • sleep
  • actigraphy
  • reference values
  • children
  • inheritance patterns
  • epidemiologic studies

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020895

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors conceptualised the manuscript. LM led the writing; FF, ACG, JM, MW and TO provided expert advice and critical review of the manuscript. ACG ran the analysis. MW is the principal investigator of the Child Health CheckPoint, planned the analyses and provided critical review of the manuscript. TO is a study investigator involved in the conception and oversight of the Child Health CheckPoint.

    • Funding This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia (project grants 1041352 and 1109355), The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation (2014-241), the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), The University of Melbourne, the National Heart Foundation of Australia (100660) and Financial Markets Foundation for Children (2014-055 and 2016-310). MW was supported by the NHMRC (1046518) and Cure Kids New Zealand. The MCRI administered the research grants for the study and provided infrastructural support (IT and biospecimen management) to its staff and the study, but played no role in the conduct or analysis of the trial. The Department of Social Services played a role in study design; however, no other funding bodies had a role in the study design and conduct; data collection, management, analysis and interpretation; preparation, review or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Research at the MCRI is supported by the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program.

    • Disclaimer The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to DSS, AIFS or the ABS.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval The CheckPoint study protocol was approved by The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (33225D) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies Ethic s Committee (14-26).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children datasets and technical documents are available to researchers at no cost via a licence agreement. Data access requests are co-ordinated by the National Centre for Longitudinal Data. More information is available at https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataverse/lsac.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.