PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Early school start times contribute to the prevalence of youth insufficient sleep and irregular sleep timing
(i.e., poor sleep health). Poor sleep health, in turn, contributes to poor health, low academic performance,
and depressed mood. Delayed start times are one way to improve sleep health in adolescents; however,
minority youth are more likely than white youth to have suboptimal sleep health and they are generally
underrepresented in reports of delayed start times. Moreover, insufficient sleep is still observed among high
schoolers with later school start times. Thus, we also need to identify other social factors that encourage good
sleep health in the context of early and late start times. The current study will examine how multiple
processes converge on an adolescent's sleep health. In particular, we will examine macro
(community/policy) and micro (family/individual) level effects of start times in disadvantaged
adolescents and their families. The goals of this project are to (1) determine whether and how later school
start times contribute to disparities in adolescent sleep health and to achievement gaps; (2) examine the degree
of reciprocity of sleep health and family functioning between adolescents and their families; and (3) determine
the moderating effects of school start times on the association between family functioning and adolescent sleep
health. To meet these objectives, the current study will survey 400 adolescent youth from high schools that are
comparable in SES, race, and ethnicity but vary on start times. A subset of these (100 parent-adolescent dyads)
will be included in a 14-day study targeting sleep health (actigraphy, diaries) and daily functioning. Our
approach will contribute to the small literature on school start times and achievement gaps and will clarify
associations between multiple systems (school policy, family, and individual) in youth who are vulnerable to
poor sleep health. Moreover, we will include multiple assessments of SES to better clarify associations between
and among race, SES, and sleep in the context of school start times. These contributions will provide multi-
level targets for decreasing racial and economic sleep health disparities—a critical objective as sleep health
inequity increases in adolescent youth.
