Components of Stress and Their Associations With Sleep Problems: A Cohort Study of Older Employees.

Abstract

To identify latent components from among 13 work and nonwork stressors and to examine whether the accumulation of stress factors within these components was associated with sleep problems. A cohort of older employees (n = 2771 individuals, n = 3921 person-observations) responded to at least two surveys. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to identify latent components. Analysis of variance was used to examine their associations with sleep. The components were: "Physical workload and shift work," "Psychosocial workload," "Social and environmental nonwork adversity," and "Life event- and health-related nonwork adversity." They were consistently associated with sleep problems, except for "Physical workload and shift work." "Social and environmental nonwork adversity" was associated with sleep problems at follow-up. Clusters of work- and nonwork-related stressors were identified, and their accumulation was associated with sleep problems among older employees.