School Connectedness and Chinese Adolescents' Sleep Problems: A Cross‐Lagged Panel Analysis

BACKGROUND Although previous research indicates an association between school connectedness and adolescents' sleep quality, its causal direction has not been determined. This study used a 2‐wave cross‐lagged panel analysis to explore the likely causal direction between these 2 constructs. METHODS Participants were 888 Chinese adolescents (43.80% boys; M age = 15.55) who provided self‐report data on school connectedness and sleep quality as well as demographic variables at the beginning and the end of a school year. RESULTS After controlling for sex and age, we found that sleep problems at the beginning of the school year were a significant and negative predictor of school connectedness at the end of the school year (b 2 = −.26, SE = .13, β 2 = −.10, p < .05), but school connectedness at the beginning of the school year did not predict sleep problems at the end of the school year (b 1 = .05, SE = .03, β 1 = .09, p > .05). Separate analyses by sex showed that the above pattern of results was mainly driven by the boys. CONCLUSIONS Our findings demonstrated that sleep problems could be a risk factor for adolescent boys' school connectedness.