DEMOGRAPHIC PREDICTORS OF SLEEP HYGIENE AWARENESS AND SLEEP QUALITY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING STUDY

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the predictive power of sleep hygiene practices in explaining sleep quality through the use of a structural equation modeling framework, and to investigate the impact of demographic variables on university students' awareness of sleep hygiene practices and sleep quality. This study used a quantitative cross-sectional methodology and surveyed 408 college freshmen. For this study, researchers used standardized questionnaires that participants filled out on their own to gather information about demographics, sleep hygiene awareness (19 items), and sleep quality (13 items). The measurement features and the direct impacts of demographic variables on latent constructs were evaluated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) utilizing Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) models. The methods of maximum likelihood were used for model estimation. The results of the study revealed that age was a significant positive predictor of both the awareness of proper sleep hygiene (β = 0.39, p <.001) and the quality of sleep (β = 0.38, p <.001). In terms of sleep quality, academic specialization was found to have a slight but noteworthy negative impact (β = -0.10, p =.018). On the other hand, gender, residence, and history of illness were not found to be statistically significant predictors (p >.05). Through the utilization of structural modeling, it was further established that the practices of sleep hygiene had a strong correlation with the quality of sleep (β = 0.93, p <.001), hence accounting for a significant percentage of the variance in sleep quality (R2 = 0.86). Every calculated model demonstrated a satisfactory level of fit to the data. Sleep hygiene awareness and quality were positively correlated with age. Academic specialization was negatively associated with sleep quality, although gender, residence, and disease history were not. Structural modeling showed that sleep hygiene habits highly predicted sleep quality and explained a lot of sleep outcome variance. Overall, the models fit the data well.