SOCIAL SUPPORT AND SLEEP QUALITY IN THE GENERAL POPULATION OF UNITED KINGDOM: SOCIOECONOMIC, DEMOGRAPHIC AND BIOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS

Sleep research has experienced an important change on the last few years. The hegemony of the biomedical bias has been extinguished and a multidisciplinary perspective has become to enter the field. Work on sleep conducted by social researchers has achieved worth and respect. Sociology has started recently this adventure in the subject of Sociology of Sleep, engrossed in the area of the Sociology of Health and Illness. Sleep, as a basic action in human life, must be taken into account in understanding every day life. The role of sociology is to illustrate the way that structural factors, sociodemographic and socioeconomic, influence the quality of sleep of people. As shown in the literature on sleep, there exists a disparity in the quality of sleep between men and women, for this reason, the current paper examines gender differences in the influence of social support on sleep quality. To achieve this objective, we undertook secondary analysis of over 8000 men and women aged 16-74 in the "Psychiatric Morbidity Survey of United Kingdom" collected in 2000 (Green 2005). The findings show a greater prevalence of sleep problems among women than men. As well as a major influence of social support. The weaker the individuals' social networks, the higher are their sleep problems. Finally, it is important to say, that the impact of social support is greater among women than men. In conclusion, gender, social support and socioeconomic background influence the quality of sleep of men and women in the United Kingdom.