Interrelations of work with health and wellbeing on a 50+ year old workforce assessed using longitudinal self-reports and actigraphy

What the study found

Participants usually blamed poor sleep on short sleep, but actigraphy showed around 7 to 8 hours on average and pointed to disturbances and awakenings instead. Sleep efficiency, not duration, consistently predicted wellbeing and sleep quality scores. Job stress items were strongly associated with both.

Limitations

Small, finance-heavy sample (26 of 45); exploratory correlations across 55 actigraphy measures; no clinical assessment.

Neurodesign interpretation

An older worker can get eight hours and still sleep badly. Environmental sleep claims that only report duration would miss this.

Possible design implications

When evaluating bedrooms, hotel rooms or shift-work rest spaces for older adults, measure awakenings and efficiency, not only duration.

Why it stays in the corpus

Retain for the aging and workplace branches: hours asleep can hide fragmented sleep.

Study design

Year-long observational study with wrist actigraphy (5,258 days) and repeated questionnaires

Population

45 workers aged 50-66 in finance, manufacturing, social care and self-employment

Setting

Everyday life over one year, UK

Field

Workplace health, aging

Mechanism

Sleep fragmentation, work demands, wellbeing

Spatial variable

None directly, work schedule and job demands

Keywords

actigraphy, sleep efficiency, older workers, work demands, wellbeing

Notes and follow-up

Excluded by the daily radar as not new that day; added because corpus inclusion is not time-limited.