title: Effects of a workplace intervention on sleep in employees' children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The implications of sleep patterns for adolescent health are well established, but we know less about larger contextual influences on youth sleep. We focused on parents' workplace experiences as extrafamilial forces that may affect youth sleep.
  
  
  METHODS
  In a group-randomized trial focused on employee work groups in the information technology division of a Fortune 500 company, we tested whether a workplace intervention improved sleep latency, duration, night-to-night variability in duration, and quality of sleep of employees' offspring, aged 9-17 years. The intervention was aimed at promoting employees' schedule control and supervisor support for personal and family life to decrease employees' work-family conflict and thereby promote the health of employees, their families, and the work organization. Analyses focused on 93 parent-adolescent dyads (57 dyads in the intervention and 46 in the comparison group) that completed baseline and 12-month follow-up home interviews and a series of telephone diary interviews that were conducted on eight consecutive evenings at each wave.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Intent-to-treat analyses of the diary interview data revealed main effects of the intervention on youth's sleep latency, night-to-night variability in sleep duration, and sleep quality, but not sleep duration.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The intervention focused on parents' work conditions, not on their parenting or parent-child relationships, attesting to the role of larger contextual influences on youth sleep and the importance of parents' work experiences in the health of their children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania. Electronic address: mchale@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: McHale
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Katie M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Lawson
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Kelly D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
authors.forename: Lynne
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Casper
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
authors.forename: Erin L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: Department of Biobehavioral Health, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania; Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Orfeu
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Buxton
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016272:Occupational Health; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D014940:Work Schedule Tolerance / Q000523:psychology; D017132:Workplace / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Adolescent sleep; Contextual influences on sleep; Intervention; Parental employment; Workplace