Preliminary exploration of sleep quality predictors during the COVID-19 pandemic across Argentina: a panel data study

ABULAFIA, CAROLINA; PATERNO MANAVELLA, MARÍA AGUSTINA; RODRÍGUEZ ESPÍNOLA, SOLANGE; SALVIA, AGUSTÍN; VIGO, DANIEL E.

Simposio; XVII Latin American Symposium on Chronobiology; 2023

Background: the pandemic due to COVID-19 has been the largest worldwide crisis in recent history.Specifically, Argentina adopted one of the most extended mandatory social isolation (MSI) to prevent virus spread, over 100 days, which has undoubtedly impacted multiple psychosocial aspects of daily life, such as sleep quality. Objective: to explore predictors of sleep quality before, during and after COVID-19 MSI isolation across Argentina’s urban regions. Methods: 667 panel data cases were selected from the Annual Survey of the Argentine Social Debt from the years 2019 (pre-MSI), 2020 (MSI) and 2021 (post-MSI). For each year, data was gathered between July andOctober. Sleep quality variable was dichotomized as good/poor. Based on the literature, 16 categorical demographic and psychosocial variables were selected from the panel data as potential sleep quality modulators, which were then compared against sleep quality by means of chi-square tests. For these preliminary analyses, comparisons were performed within each year. Additionally, McNemar’s tests were performed to compare different years’ sleep quality. Results: Significant associations were observed between poor sleep quality and lower education level (incompletesecondary level and below) (2019: p=0.048, 2021: p=0.002), lower occupational status (2019: p=0.036, 2021: p=0.041), low and very low socioeconomic status (2019: p