Psychosocial factors affecting sleep quality of pre-employed firefighters:a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Background@#There have been no health-related studies of pre-employed firefighters without firefighter-specific job-related factors (FSJRF). This study aimed to evaluate the sleep quality of pre-employed firefighters and to examine the relationship between sleep quality and psychosocial factors. @*Methods@#We conducted a self-report questionnaire survey for 602 pre-employed firefighters at 3 Fire Service Academies after brief lecture about sleep. Sleep quality and psychosocial variables such as depression, anxiety, stress and social support were evaluated. The independent 2 sample t-test, χ2 test and multiple logistic regression analysis were used to evaluate the effect of the variables on the sleep quality of pre-employed firefighters. @*Results@#Among a total of 602 people, 347 (57.6%) had good sleep quality and 255 (42.4%) had poor sleep quality. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of them was 3.29 ± 1.41) and 7.87 ± 2.20), respectively. 24 (4.0%) were evaluated to have insomnia by Insomnia Severity Index.Logistic regression analyses showed that the depression (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 5.940, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.124–11.292), anxiety (aOR 4.233, 95% CI 2.138–8.381), stress (aOR 2.880, 95% CI 1.915–4.330) and social support (aOR 0.959, 95% CI 0.939–0.980) have a significant effect on sleep quality after adjusted by sex, age, smoking status, drinking status, caffeine intake, past shift working and circadian rhythm type. @*Conclusions@#Depression, anxiety, stress and social support were associated with sleep quality among pre-employed firefighters. Repeated follow-up studies of pre-employed firefighters are needed to further assess their change of sleep quality and identify the FSJRF that may affect the sleep quality of firefighters.