Associations of sleep problems with externalizing behaviors and preacademic performance: The moderating role of family socioeconomic status

Previous research has tended to measure sleep problems as an aggregated construct and neglected the potential moderating role of family socioeconomic status (SES). Also, most research has been conducted with school-aged children and adolescents from European and European–American families. This study filled some of these gaps in the literature by examining whether family SES moderated the associations of bedtime resistance, parasomnia, and disordered breathing with externalizing behaviors and preacademic performance in a community sample of Chinese families with preschool children. Four hundred eighty-six parents from Hong Kong, China, provided questionnaire data on their preschool children's sleep and adjustment. Hierarchical regression analyses evaluated the associations of sleep problems and child adjustment, controlling for demographic factors. Interaction terms were entered to examine whether the associations varied by family SES, as indexed by family income. Results suggested that bedtime resistance, parasomnia, and disordered breathing were positively and uniquely associated with externalizing behaviors. Bedtime resistance was positively associated with externalizing behaviors and negatively associated with preacademic performance in low-, but not high-, SES families. Discussion highlighted the utility of a multidimensional approach to studying sleep problems and the potential moderating roles of environmental stressors when examining the impact of sleep on adjustment. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.