Wesley Godfrey and Jeremy Yorgason, Ph.D., School of Family Life
As populations worldwide grow increasingly older, the need to understand associations between daily health behaviors and relational outcomes among the aging population is of great importance. Further, exploring these associations among individuals in a relationship as common, yet as influential, as the marriage relationship is especially imperative to consider. Current literature has identified sleep as an important correlate to marital quality (Strawbridge, Shema, & Roberts, 2004). However, less is understood concerning the mechanisms that may account for this link, especially among the older population. Furthermore, though studies have identified important relationships between sleep and mood (Neckelmann, Mykletun, & Dahl, 2007), no studies to date have examined the links between sleep and marriage while taking mood into account. The current study explores these associations in the lives of 191 older adult couples using a daily context. Using confirmatory analyses of known interactions between sleep and marriage, as well as considering positive and negative mood as potential mediators of this relationship, we identified positive mood as a mediator that often significantly linked sleep and marital interactions.
Participants for the current study, called The Life and Family Legacies Daily Experiences Study, were recruited from the greater, longitudinal Life and Family Legacies Study, which, since its inception in 1966, has examined the career and personal interests of 6,729 individuals that attended high school in the state of Washington (see Otto, Call & Spenner, 1981; Call, Otto & Spenner 1982). Ultimately, using various stratification criteria (i.e. chronic illness vs. good health, veteran vs. non-veteran status, etc.) and other screening protocols 559 participants were randomly identified to be recruited into the current study. Each spouse of the couples agreeing to participate completed a daily survey, independent of each other, over a period of 14 days (14 surveys each, total 28 surveys per couple). At the end of the data collection period, analyzable data were obtained from 191 couples (5196 total surveys) with a final response rate of 34%. These 191 couples represented an age range of 60-64 years old (average age, 62.43), ethnicity of predominantly Caucasian, 85% had education beyond high school, and they had an average salary of $88,800/year. Fifty-eight percent of the sample was in their first marriage, with the rest in a second or higher order marriage.
The survey used in the current study contained items assessing a variety of physical, mental, emotional and relational health outcomes, including adapted versions of widely-accepted mood and marital satisfaction scales. Sleep was assessed using several items, including number of hours slept, how well participants felt they slept the previous night, and how rested they felt each day. Data were analyzed using multi-variate, multi-level models in a statistical analysis program (SAS). Due to the careful preservation of survey day congruence between spouses, both actor effects (one’s own sleep and mood influencing one’s own perception of marital quality) and partner effects (one’s own sleep and mood influencing one’s partner’s perception of marital quality) were assessed.
Findings from these analyses provide consistent support for the currently recognized link between sleep and marriage. Specifically, significant associations existed between daily hours slept, sleep quality, and restedness and daily marital interactions; notably, with the direction of nearly all significant effects suggesting that better sleep is linked with better marital outcomes. And although these effects were observed in all three measures of sleep quality and among both spouses, they were most consistent for the daily restedness sleep measure and among wives. For example, for wives, higher than their own average restedness, as well as greater restedness than the wife sample mean were significantly related to increases in their reports of positive marital events, decreases in negative marital events, and higher perceived daily marital satisfaction. And while daily reports of mood were almost invariably associated with each marital outcome, mediation analyses indicated that positive mood, more than negative mood, was frequently a mechanism linking sleep with marital interactions. Finally, in some cases, though not as consistently as the actor effects described above, husband sleep and mood predicted wife reports of marital interactions and vice versa.
A possible reason for fewer associations between number of hours slept and marital outcomes is that sleeping fewer hours may not relate to marital quality in immediate succession, but may manifest two or more days after a poor night’s sleep. Thus, considering next-day effects of sleep on marital satisfaction and including mood as a potential mediator may also be important to consider in older adults, as well as marital interactions with multiple consecutive poor sleep nights. Additionally, the fact that negative mood less consistently mediated the sleep-marriage link may be a product of fluctuations in positive emotions being more frequently reported than negative or that some people are simply less likely to endorse negative mood states at all. Further research in this area should also focus on these associations in individuals of a more diverse ethnic background, as well as older adults with a broader range of ages.
In sum, as a major contributor to physical, emotional, and mental health in later-life, marital satisfaction and its improvement should be acknowledged as a clinical motivation for encouraging proper sleep behavior among older adult patients. Given the increased pervasiveness of sleep problems and disorders among older adults (Neikrug & Ancoli-Israel, 2010), this is especially critical and should thus be considered by practitioners working with older adults in medical, psychological, and marriage-counseling environments.
I express my sincere gratitude to donors, administration, my mentor, and others that have supported this project and our work to bring these important findings to light. We are excited to be submitting this work, in manuscript form, to a medical journal for publication and anticipate its approval and dissemination in coming months.