Prevalence of Healthy Sleep Duration among Adults — United States, 2014

“…In our study, the estimated sleep duration was 7.59 hours and the proportion of adults with short sleep (<7 hours) and long sleep (≥9 hours) were 23.1% and 19.7%, respectively, on workdays. These findings were not consistent with previous studies showing a sleep duration of 7.18 hours in 2012 among US adults aged 18 years and older and 7.00 hours in 2014 among adults aged 16 years and older. Consistently, the prevalence of adults with sleep shorter than 7 hours in this study was lower than prior estimates from the National Health Interview Survey (29.2% in 2012) and from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (35.0% in 2014 and 13.0% in 2018) .…”

“…These findings were not consistent with previous studies showing a sleep duration of 7.18 hours in 2012 among US adults aged 18 years and older and 7.00 hours in 2014 among adults aged 16 years and older. Consistently, the prevalence of adults with sleep shorter than 7 hours in this study was lower than prior estimates from the National Health Interview Survey (29.2% in 2012) and from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (35.0% in 2014 and 13.0% in 2018) . The differences could be due to differences in the questionnaires, since participants in NHANES before 2015, or National Health Interview Survey and Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System, were required to self-report round numbers, whereas estimates were rounded to the nearest half-hour in NHANES 2017 to 2020.…”

“…In a nationally representative panel, we explored the prevalence of REST-Q scores and found that high restorative sleep scores were observed in 28% of US adults. Whereas, previous nationally representative data has found markers of sleep health, such as sufficient sleep duration, in two thirds of US adults (Liu, 2016 ), our findings indicate that less than one third of US adults received high scores for restorative sleep. We also examined demographic characteristics with respect to scores on the REST-Q, finding that higher scores were more likely among those age 60 and above, those who were widowed, and those who reported being retired.…”

“…Additionally, those who slept fewer than 6 h per night were more likely to skip breakfast ( 15 ) and consume sugar-sweetened beverages, including caffeinated beverages, than those who slept 7–8 h per night ( 46 ) . In the current study, the proportion sleeping at least 7 h per night was 88·5 %, which contrasts with national survey data where only 67·8 % of 18–24-year-olds and 62·1 % of 25–34-year-olds reported sleeping at least 7 h per night, although the self-report methods of these two studies were different ( 9 ) . Because of the narrow distribution of sleep in our sample, we did not have sufficient precision to consider more extreme categories of shorter sleep duration as the primary exposure, although in sensitivity analyses we showed that those who slept fewer than 6 h per night skipped more breakfast and consumed more sugar-sweetened beverages than those sleeping 7–8 h per night.…”