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Retrospectively reported childhood interparental conflict and actigraphy-derived sleep outcomes in older adulthood
Date
2026-12-01
Abstract
Childhood exposure to interparental conflict (IPC) is a common adverse childhood experience (ACE) associated with sleep disturbances across the lifespan. However, existing evidence predominantly relies on subjective, self-reported measures of sleep. It remains unclear whether IPC is associated with actigraphy-derived sleep outcomes in later life. This preregistered study used secondary data from the prospective cohort study (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing) to examine whether retrospective reports of frequent IPC before age 16 (Wave 3: 2006–2007) were associated with actigraphy-derived sleep outcomes assessed approximately 15 years later (Wave 10: 2021–2023, n = 1158). Actigraphy-derived sleep outcomes included sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset (WASO), sleep efficiency (SEff), and overnight sleep duration. Among participants exposed to childhood IPC (n = 263), we additionally examined whether age of first exposure predicted sleep outcomes in the subsample who provided valid age data (n = 179, mean age of first exposure = 7.84 years, SD = 3.56), we additionally examined whether age of first exposure predicted sleep outcomes. Exploratory analyses tested moderation by sex, childhood socioeconomic disadvantage, and age. Childhood IPC exposure was not significantly associated with any actigraphy-derived sleep outcome as a main effect, and age of first exposure did not predict sleep outcomes. No significant moderation effects were found for sex or childhood socioeconomic disadvantage. Age significantly moderated associations with sleep efficiency and overnight sleep duration, such that older baseline age was associated with poorer sleep efficiency and shorter sleep duration among those exposed to IPC. However, these moderation effects were not preregistered, are small in magnitude, and did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. These findings should therefore be considered hypothesis generating only and require replication in larger samples. Taken together, no statistically significant associations were observed between childhood IPC and actigraphy-derived sleep outcomes in this analytic sample.
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Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Sleep Epidemiology 6, 100150
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Sustainable Development Goals
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International