The relationship between sleep timing and quality, and criminal/problematic behaviour

Background

The quality of our sleep is very important and poor sleep quality impacts on many facets of life including our behaviour. Previous research has established that sleep disruption, sleep disorders, and reduced sleep quality are related to more impulsive and less well-regulated behaviours. For example, some research has indicated that being awake overnight may increase the risk of suicidal, homicidal, and violent behaviour. This research is studying the relationship between sleep quality, sleep timing, and problematic/criminal behaviour. Not many studies in this area have included a large number of adult participants, as more studies have included adolescents. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between sleep quality, sleep timing, and problematic/criminal behaviours in young adults. This is important because understanding this connection might help to reduce problem behaviours.

Research Questions / Hypotheses

In this study, we measured whether people with better or poorer sleep quality also engage in problem behaviours, and then we measured several factors known to contribute to both sleep quality and problem behaviours. These include experiences of trauma, impulsiveness, how emotions are managed, alcohol consumption, medications, smoking, and other health problems.

It was hypothesised that:

- Sleep disruption and later sleep times will be related to more criminal/problematic behaviours.

- Decreased emotion regulation and increased impulsivity will be related to poor sleep and more problem behaviours in young adults.

Participants

Participants were healthy adults over 18 years of age who volunteered to participate in the research. 564 (444 female) participants completed this study and exclusions due to significant health concerns or sleep difficulties are being determined due to ongoing analysis.

Methods

All data was collected remotely via Qualtrics online survey software. Participants completed several questionnaires online including: The difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz and Roemer, 2004); The I19 (Eysenck, S. B. G., & Eysenck, H. J., 1978); The Life Events Checklist (LEC); The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; Buysse et al., 1989); Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS; Johns 1991); Berlin Questionnaire (Netzer et al., 1999); PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5; Weathers et al, 2013), as well as demographic and general health questionnaires, including those about alcohol and caffeine use (to determine the impact of such variables on sleep, as they have known impacts), and information about past problem or criminal behaviours.

Results

Data analysis is still ongoing, however data will be analysed using a mixture of ANOVA and logistic regression depending on the dependent variable being utilised. Significance level will be set to α = .05 indicating a p-value of < α to be statistically significant. Data may be analysed prior to inclusion of all participants for preliminary analyses. On preliminary analysis, it was noted that 8% of respondents indicated that they had engaged in unlawful behaviour and 33% rated their sleep quality as fairly bad or very bad. About 15% of respondents who reported having engaged in unlawful behaviour also reported very bad or fairly bad sleep quality, and approximately 58% of participants who engaged in unlawful behaviour reported a habitual sleep time of after midnight.

Implications

While these are preliminary findings, results indicate that further investigation into the relationships between late sleep times, or poor sleep quality, on problem/unlawful behaviours is warranted. It is possible that interaction effects with constructs such as emotion regulation, impulsivity or the experience of trauma may further impact on this relationship.