Environmental and behavioural factors associated with school children's sleep in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

It is important to consider children's sleep within the wider family context and to be aware that parents may over-estimate their children's sleep. Simple strategies to promote sleep health in clinical settings or education programmes include regular weekend bedtimes that align with those on school nights, removing technology from bedrooms and minimising caffeine consumption. An awareness of potential sleep differences associated with shift-working adults may ensure children are supported to have consistent sleep routines that promote adequate sleep.

Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial evaluating the effect of prenatal omega-3 LCPUFA supplementation to reduce the incidence of preterm birth: the ORIP trial

“…Results show a clear reduction in EPTB (RR 0.61, 95% CI 0.46 to 0.81; 9 randomised controlled trials (RCTs); n=4351) for supplementation compared with placebo. 19 Our DOMInO trial supports the safety data from previous systematic reviews; however, there were more post-term births requiring obstetric intervention (induction or caesarean section) in the ω-3 LCPUFA supplemented group compared with control (17.59% vs 13.72%, adjusted RR 1.28, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.54, p=0.01). To determine both efficacy and safety of this intervention, we therefore plan to undertake a further trial with adequate power to assess the effect of ω-3 LCPUFA supplementation in pregnancy on EPTB as the primary outcome, with a unique design ceasing the intervention at 34 weeks’ gestation to reduce the risk of post-term birth.…”

Effortful Control Moderates the Relation Between Electronic-Media Use and Objective Sleep Indicators in Childhood

“…Of the four studies considering media and actigraph-measured sleep in children, three are in large samples but subject to methodological limitations, including reliance on 1 night of actigraphy (Nixon et al, 2008), use of waist-worn actigraphs (Chaput et al, 2014), and dichotomization of screen time (Harrex et al, 2018). Several studies found no associations between weekly or daily screen time and sleep (e.g., Harrex et al, 2018;Nixon et al, 2008), whereas two other studies found associations between daily screen time and efficiency (but not duration; Chaput et al, 2014) and later bedtimes and shorter sleep duration (Muller, Signal, Elder, & Gander, 2017). Different measurement and outcomes complicate interpretation, but the finding in two studies (Chaput et al, 2014;Muller et al, 2017) that screens in children's bedrooms were related to objective sleep when average daily media use was not suggests that media use is a better predictor near bedtime than across the day, consistent with associations between subjective sleep and prebedtime media use (Hale et al, 2018;Owens et al, 1999).…”

Relationship between parent knowledge of child sleep, and child sleep practices and problems: A pilot study in a children's hospital cohort

“…Parents completed the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), a screening tool for behavioural and medical sleep problems that has been used in samples from New Zealand, with some modifications to the language used for the appropriateness to local culture. Items on the CSHQ pertain to children's bedtime and bedtime routine, sleep behaviour, waking during the night, morning waking and daytime sleepiness. We used abbreviated scoring procedures, and report a combined score across 33 items, with possible scores ranging from 0 to 66.…”