According to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Michaela Kudrnáová of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University and Ale Kudrná of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, sleep quality is significantly more strongly associated with quality of life over time than either sleep duration or social jetlag.
The authors based their analyses on information from the 2018-2020 annual Czech Household Panel Survey. Multiple adults from the same household participated in the survey, and those who had previously taken part in the survey were asked to do so again in subsequent waves. In 2018, 5,132 Czech adults participated in the survey, with this number increasing to 2,046 in 2019 and 2,161 in 2020.
Self-reported sleep duration, sleep quality, and sleep timing or “social jetlag” (when one’s socially directed sleep rhythms and innate biological rhythms are mismatched) were analyzed alongside responses to questions about life satisfaction, well-being, happiness, subjective health, and work stress. Their model compared responses from different years of the survey for the same person, as well as analyzing results within the same person’s responses from different years. This is the first study to examine the long-term impact of social jetlag on well-being.
What the authors concluded: “The results of this longitudinal study provide an important insight into people’s lifestyles. Despite people having different sleep requirements, the results suggest that both average sleep duration and social jetlag remain moderately stable over time.”
“Sleep quality is also a valuable subjective measure related to other factors which encompass several important areas of life, such as mental and physical health, emotional wellbeing, cognitive functioning and feeling of safety.”
