Sleep patterns among adolescents are related to health outcomes and health risk behaviors. This study aimed to describe sleep patterns of Korean adolescents and to find the association between sleep patterns and health risk behaviors and health outcomes. Using the junior high school students' panel data (n = 2351, 12-15 years old) from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey, this study described the sleep patterns operationalized as rising time, bedtime, and sleep duration both on weekdays and weekends. The relationships of sleep patterns with health outcomes and/or health risk behaviors were tested using mixed effect linear regression for continuous health variables and using mixed effect logit regression for binary health variables. Obesity status, the number of chronic symptoms, self-rated health status, smoking, and alcohol consumption were associated with rising time on weekdays after controlling for gender, living area, and housing type. The same set of variables except for the number of chronic symptoms were associated with bedtime during the weekdays. Sleep duration during the weekdays was associated with obesity status, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Similar patterns of association between sleep pattern variables during the weekends and health-related outcome variables were found, but were less obvious than those for weekdays. Significant relationships between sleep patterns and various health-related variables were found among adolescents in Korea. The results from this study indicate that helping adolescents change their sleeping times as necessary to ensure adequate sleep should be considered important in diminishing health risk behaviors and promoting positive health outcomes.
Keywords: adolescents; health outcomes; health risk behaviors; sleep patterns.