The Effects of Sleep Quality and Resilience on Perceived Stress, Dietary Behaviors, and Alcohol Misuse: A Mediation-Moderation Analysis of Higher Education Students from Asia, Europe, and North America during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has increased the already high levels of stress that higher education students experience. Stress influences health behaviors, including those related to dietary behaviors, alcohol, and sleep; yet the effects of stress can be mitigated by resilience. To date, past research studying the connections between dietary behaviors, alcohol misuse, sleep, and resilience commonly investigated singular relationships between two of the constructs.

Health Behaviors of Higher Education Students from 7 Countries: Poorer Sleep Quality during the COVID-19 Pandemic Predicts Higher Dietary Risk.

Health behaviors of higher education students can be negatively influenced by stressful events. The global COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to characterize and compare health behaviors across multiple countries and to examine how these behaviors are shaped by the pandemic experience. Undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in universities in China, Ireland, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the United States (USA) were recruited into this cross-sectional study.

Increased Resilience Weakens the Relationship between Perceived Stress and Anxiety on Sleep Quality: A Moderated Mediation Analysis of Higher Education Students from 7 Countries.

High levels of perceived stress and anxiety among university students are a global concern and are known to negatively influence sleep. However, few studies have explored how stress response styles, like psychological resilience and rumination, might alter these relationships. Using validated tools, perceived stress, anxiety, stress response styles, and sleep behaviors of undergraduate and graduate students from seven countries during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic were characterized in order to examine the relationships between these factors using mediation and moderation analyses.