Global sleep quality among multiracial college students in the United States: A brief report of concurrent associations with general and multiracial discrimination and negative affect.

College environments confer risk for sleep health, with discrimination compounding this risk for marginalized college students, in line with the sociocultural determinants of health framework. Multiracial (alternatively, mixed-race or biracial) college students may be susceptible to poor sleep quality due to their unique experiences of Multiracial-specific discrimination as well as general, everyday discrimination. Further, negative affect may play a role in the discrimination-sleep association. The current cross-sectional study investigated the association of general and Multiracial discrimination and negative affect with global sleep quality among a convenience sample of 193 Multiracial college students. Participants were recruited from a predominantly White institution in 2021 and completed an online survey reporting lifetime discriminatory experiences (general and Multiracial-specific), negative affect (depressive and anxiety symptoms), and past-month global sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index). Findings from a hierarchical linear regression model indicated that covariates (i.e., age and sex) accounted for 2% of the variance in sleep quality. General discrimination explained 11% of additional variance, and Multiracial discrimination accounted for a further 4% of variance and was associated with poor sleep quality (<i>ϐ</i>=.23, <i>p</i><.001) beyond general discrimination, age, and sex. Negative affect also significantly predicted poor sleep quality when added in the model (<i>ϐ</i>=.56, <i>p</i><.001), further accounting for 25% of variance. Exploratory ancillary analyses suggested that negative affect may account for the discrimination-sleep quality relation and sleep quality may account for the discrimination-negative affect relation. Findings extend limited research on Multiracial college student sleep health and its associations with both general and Multiracial-specific discrimination and negative affect.