Adolescents' experiences of peer ethnic/racial victimization and school engagement in everyday life: sleep as a moderator

Study objectives: Stressful ethnic/racial experiences, such as peer ethnic/racial victimization, may harm ado-lescents' adjustment. Using a daily diary design, the current study examined how same-night and previous-night sleep may moderate the within-person associations between peer ethnic/racial victimization and school engagement.Methods: The analytic sample consisted of 133 ninth graders (Mage = 14.54 years old; 44% Black, 21% White, 16% Latinx, 5% Native, 4% Asian, and 9% other). Adolescents reported their peer ethnic/racial victimization experiences and school engagement every day for 14 consecutive days. Sleep was measured objectively by actigraphy watches daily during the 14 days.Results: Multilevel analyses identified significant interactions between peer ethnic/racial victimization and same-night time in bed and latency for next-day engagement. The negative association between victimiza-tion and next-day school engagement was only significant when adolescents had shorter time in bed and longer latency than their typical levels that night, supporting the recovery role of sleep (ie, same-night sleep helps adolescents recover from victimization). There was also a significant interaction between previous-night time in bed and today's peer ethnic/racial victimization for same-day school engagement. The negative association between victimization and same-day school engagement was only significant when adolescents had shorter time in bed than their typical levels the previous night, supporting a preparatory hypothesis of sleep (ie, sleep helps prepare adolescents for next-day victimization). Neither previous-night nor same-night sleep efficiency moderated the association between victimization and school engagement.Conclusions: Findings highlighted sleep as an important bioregulatory protective factor that may alleviate the challenges associated with ethnic/racial victimization.& COPY; 2023 National Sleep Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.