Relationship between stressful life events and sleep quality: The mediating and moderating role of psychological suzhi

Abstract

Objective: The present study investigated the relationship between stressful life events and sleep quality. Further, it explored the mediating and moderating role of psychological suzhi in the relationship between stressful life events and sleep quality.

Method: The Adolescent Self-rating Life Events Checklist (ASLEC), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Concise Scale of Psychological Suzhi for College Students (Health Edition) were used to collect data from a sample of 1212 college students. SPSS 20.0 and SPSS macro Process, specially developed for assessing complex models including mediators and moderators, analyzed the data.

Results: High scores for stressful life events were related to worse sleep quality, and high scores on psychological suzhi were closely related with better sleep quality. Psychological suzhi mediated and moderated the relationship between stressful life events and sleep quality.

Conclusions: The results demonstrate that stressful life events can directly affect the sleep quality of college students and can indirectly affect sleep quality through affecting psychological suzhi. Additionally, psychological suzhi can buffer the adverse effects of stressful life events on sleep quality. This finding supports the hypothesis that psychological suzhi can act as a pressure buffer. The results enrich the research on the function mechanism of psychological suzhi and could inform future interventions for sleep disorders.

Keywords: Chinese; College students; Psychological suzhi; Sleep quality; Stressful life events.