Associations between neighbourhood characteristics and sleep in adults
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2020-08-17
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Abstract
Evidence suggests that neighbourhood built environments and socioeconomic status are associated with health behaviours and outcomes. Sleep is a key health behaviour in the development of chronic illness. Some evidence suggests that neighbourhood characteristics are associated with differences in sleep in adult populations. The aim of this thesis was to generate quantitative evidence on the associations between neighbourhood built environment and neighbourhood socioeconomic status and sleep duration in Canadian adults. Using data from the Pathways to Health study, we estimated associations between objective measures of neighbourhood built environment (i.e., street pattern) and neighbourhood socioeconomic status and sleep duration, and odds of short or long sleep durations, in an adult sample within the city of Calgary, Alberta. We also tested if the interaction between neighbourhood street pattern and socioeconomic status was associated with differences in mean sleep duration and odds of short or long sleep. In an analysis of n=797 adults, we found that the interaction between neighbourhood street pattern and socioeconomic status was associated with sleep duration. Participants in neighbourhoods characterized by curvilinear street patterns and low socioeconomic status had the shortest marginal mean sleep at 6.93 hours per day, while those in curvilinear high socioeconomic status neighbourhoods had the longest at 7.43 hours per day. Our findings suggest that associations between neighbourhood socioeconomic status and sleep may be modified by built environment characteristics, or vice versa. Interventions to address short sleep durations should be targeted at underlying inequities in sleep between residents of neighbourhoods with different SES but should take into account neighbourhood design. Future studies should incorporate measures of both neighbourhood built environment and neighbourhood socioeconomic status and test for interactions between these neighbourhood characteristics to better understand complex pathways between neighbourhoods and sleep in adult populations.
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Lukic, R. (2020). Associations between neighbourhood characteristics and sleep in adults (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.