Original ArticleDoes mental health history explain gender disparities in insomnia symptoms among young adults?
Section snippets
Disclaimer
The findings and conclusions in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Data
A specially created geo-coded version of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III, merged with information about neighborhood SES from the US Census, forms the basis for this study. The NHANES III includes interview data on a representative sample of US residents, collected between 1988 and 1994, with an over-sample of Blacks and Mexican Americans. Respondent addresses were geocoded to the census tract, using either address or street intersection. Fourteen-percent of
Results
Table 1 shows weighted descriptive statistics for the sample, including insomnia prevalence and demographic, social, and health characteristics. Almost a quarter of the sample reported having insomnia symptoms, and women had higher prevalence (27.4%) than men (21.6%). The distributions of the two key variables and how they vary by gender are also shown in Table 1.
Table 2 presents odds ratios for Models 1, 2, and 6, as previously described. In Model 1 (with age and race/ethnicity controls) women
Discussion
Consistent with previous literature, we find that women are more likely to report insomnia symptoms than men. Only a few studies have previously investigated why this disparity exists [33], [53]. We enhance this research by analyzing the role that various individual-level and neighborhood-level factors play in explaining the gender difference in insomnia. We find that neighborhood SES did not explain any of the gender difference. Individual-level sociodemographic factors, health behaviors and
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Robert N. Anderson, Julia S. Holmes, and Jennifer H. Madans of the National Center for Health Statistics for their review of a draft of this manuscript.
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