TY - JOUR
T1 - The relationship between sleep and work
T2 - A meta-analysis
AU - Litwiller, Brett
AU - Snyder, Lori Anderson
AU - Taylor, William D.
AU - Steele, Logan M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - Sleep has tremendous importance to organizations because of its relationship with employee performance, safety, health, and attitudes. Moreover, sleep is a malleable behavior that may be improved by individual and organizational changes. Despite the consequential and modifiable nature of sleep, little consensus exists regarding its conceptualization, and how the choice of conceptualization may impact relationships with organizational antecedents and outcomes. To offer a stronger foundation for future theory and research about employee sleep, this study calculated meta-analytic correlations of sleep quality and sleep quantity from 152 primary studies of sleep among workers in organizations. Analyses revealed that both sleep quality and sleep quantity associated negatively with workload and a number of health, attitudinal, and affective outcomes. Despite their conceptual similarity, notable differences existed in sleep quality and sleep quantity in terms of their relationships to many different correlates. Generally, the relationships between sleep quality and the examined correlates were stronger for variables that reflected perceptions. Moderator analyses showed that relationships between sleep quality and quantity may be affected by measurement method and the number of self-report items used, while there is little evidence of the effect of measurement time frame. Findings from this first meta-analytic investigation of the occupational sleep literature have implications for the development of theory about relationships between sleep and work, the measurement of sleep, the identification of organizational correlates of sleep, and the design of interventions intended to improve employee sleep.
AB - Sleep has tremendous importance to organizations because of its relationship with employee performance, safety, health, and attitudes. Moreover, sleep is a malleable behavior that may be improved by individual and organizational changes. Despite the consequential and modifiable nature of sleep, little consensus exists regarding its conceptualization, and how the choice of conceptualization may impact relationships with organizational antecedents and outcomes. To offer a stronger foundation for future theory and research about employee sleep, this study calculated meta-analytic correlations of sleep quality and sleep quantity from 152 primary studies of sleep among workers in organizations. Analyses revealed that both sleep quality and sleep quantity associated negatively with workload and a number of health, attitudinal, and affective outcomes. Despite their conceptual similarity, notable differences existed in sleep quality and sleep quantity in terms of their relationships to many different correlates. Generally, the relationships between sleep quality and the examined correlates were stronger for variables that reflected perceptions. Moderator analyses showed that relationships between sleep quality and quantity may be affected by measurement method and the number of self-report items used, while there is little evidence of the effect of measurement time frame. Findings from this first meta-analytic investigation of the occupational sleep literature have implications for the development of theory about relationships between sleep and work, the measurement of sleep, the identification of organizational correlates of sleep, and the design of interventions intended to improve employee sleep.
KW - Fatigue
KW - Job strain
KW - Occupational health
KW - Sleep quality
KW - Sleep quantity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85001065620&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/apl0000169
DO - 10.1037/apl0000169
M3 - Article
C2 - 27893255
AN - SCOPUS:85001065620
SN - 0021-9010
VL - 102
SP - 682
EP - 699
JO - Journal of Applied Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Psychology
IS - 4
ER -