| BackgroundAging population increases rapidly in China, and China has entered the aging society. The health problems of the elderly have drawn the whole society’s attention. The poor quality of sleep is the problem that the elderly generally reflect. Sleep problems are directly related to the elderly’s quality of life.The implementation of birth control policy led to the decrease of next generation. The reform and open policy made a lot of middle-aged and young people leave their homes. Thus, a special group emerged—the empty-nesters. What’s more, the number of empty-nesters are on the rise. The problems of empty nesters have drawn attention of the whole society and scholars.Previous researches focus mostly on pension mechanism, such as health insurance. Few reports about the comparison of sleep between empty-nesters and non-empty-nesters can be found. This paper studies the comparison of sleep quality between empty-nesters and non-empty-nesters its influencing factors.ObjectivesWe will make a comparative study on the status of sleep quality and its determinants between empty-nest elderly and non-empty-nest elderly in Shandong Province which will provide the basis for improving the quality of their sleep.MethodsThis cross-sectional study enrolled 3416 participants by using a three-stage cluster sampling. We use a self-made general questionnaire that contains gender、age、 education、marital status、number of people that can be counted on for help、feasibility of getting help from people when being ill、self-rated health and so on. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess the sleep quality. PSQI consists of 7 elements, they are subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbance, use of sleep medication and daytime dysfunction. The global criterion is that the one who obtained scores of 5 or more was diagnosed as poor sleeper, while in china, the criterion is commonly set as seven (PSQI>7).We divided Empty-nest elderly into empty-nest singles and empty-nest couples.T-tests are used to compare means of PSQI score and chi-squared tests are used to compare prevalence of sleep quality across the three groups and Linear regression analysis to identify the determinants of sleep quality between empty-nest elderly and non-empty-nest ones.Results(1)The average PSQI score that participants obtained was 6.59±4.46. According to the two standards of the world (PSQI≥5) and China (PSQI>7),2051(60%) and 1330(38.9%) are poor sleepers.(2)Compared with empty-nest couples and non-empty-nest elderly,the mean total PSQI scores were significantly higher in empty-nest singles.The differences in the PSQI subscales were significant between the three groups (P<0.05).(3)Comparing the mean PSQI scores across different variables among different subgroups of the elderly, the female scores were all higher than male in three groups.(4)There are statistical significance among non-empty-nest elderly with different age and marital status. Those aged over 80 had higher score, and the married got lower scores than the other marital status. The higher the education level people had, the less scores they would obtain in each group.(5)Gender、education、debt status、feasibility of getting help from people when being ill、self-reported health、BMI and the Kessler 10 index score were all the influencing factors of sleep quality.Conclusions(1)Sleep quality was poorer in both empty-nesters and non-empty-nesters.(2)Among the three groups of the elderly, the empty-nest singles had the poorest quality of sleep.(3)Of the empty-nest singles, the female had poorer quality of sleep than the male. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the female empty-nest singles. |
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