Popis: |
Sleep duration, timing and consistency are all important for maintaining good physical health and psychological functioning. While differences in sleep duration across countries are well-known, fewer large-scale studies characterising differences in sleep variability and differences between weekday and weekend sleep have been conducted. The goal of this study was, therefore, to capitalize on the increased use of wearable technology to characterise nocturnal sleep, weekday sleep variability and changes in sleep patterns at the weekend in a large, globally diverse sample. Using data from over 50 million night’s sleep, sleep measures for ~220,000 wearable device users from 35 countries were calculated. Multiple regression was used to assess the impact country of residence had on a number of sleep measures including sleep duration, sleep variability, weekend sleep extension and social jet lag. Our results support prior findings that nocturnal sleep duration and sleep efficiency are lower in Asia than other regions. Furthermore, weekend sleep extension is longer in Europe and the USA than in Asia, and is only partially related to shorter weekday sleep duration. There are also cross-country differences in social jetlag although the regional differences are less distinct than for weekend sleep extension. Variability in weekday sleep duration also tends to be greater in Asia than other regions. Our results suggest that culture affects not only sleep duration and timing, but also how sleep is modulated over the course of the week. While sleep is influenced by many factors, we hypothesize that differing work cultures may be one contributory factor in explaining why sleep patterns differ in different countries. |