Background: Most adolescents are sleep deprived on school days, yet how they self-regulate their sleep-wake behaviours is poorly understood. Using ecological momentary assessment, this intense longitudinal study explored patterns of adolescents’ daily bedtime and risetime planning and execution, and whether these behaviours predicted sleep opportunity.Methods: Every afternoon, for 2 school weeks and the subsequent 2 vacation weeks, 205 (54.1% female, 64.4% non-White) adolescents from Year 10-12 (M±SDage = 16.9±0.9) reported their plans for bedtime (BT) that evening, and for risetimes (RT) the following day. Actual daily sleep was measured via actigraphy and sleep diary.Results: Some adolescents never planned bedtime (school 19.5%, non-school 53.2%) or risetime (school 1.5%, non-school 24.4%). More adolescents planned consistently (≥75% of days) on schooldays (BT=29.9%, RT=61.3%) compared on non-schooldays (BT=3.5%, RT=2.5%). On average adolescents went to bed later than planned, delaying their bedtime longer on non-schooldays (71min) compared to schooldays (46min). Of those who executed their plans within ≤15 minutes, more did it consistently (≥75% of days) on schooldays (BT=40.9%, RT=67.7%) than on non-schooldays (BT=29.7%, RT=58.6%). Mixed effects models utilizing daily data, controlling for sex, race, and study day, showed that bedtime planning predicted longer time in bed (TIB; p < .01) on schooldays and shorter TIB on non-schooldays (p < .01); greater delay in actual (compared to planned) bedtime predicted shorter TIB (p-values < .001).Conclusions: Adolescents may require support during the transition from parent-controlled to autonomous sleep self-regulation. Bedtime planning on school nights and going to bed as planned are two modifiable sleep regulatory behaviours that are protective and may serve as therapeutic targets for increasing sleep opportunity in adolescents.
Daily Ecological Momentary Assessments of happy and sad moods in people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders: What do participants who are never sad think about their activities and abilities?