Multilevel associations between discrimination and sleep health among ethnically and racially minoritized students during the college transition: Coping as a mediator.

Objectives: Ethnically and racially minoritized college students encounter various forms of discrimination, which disrupt sleep health.However, the mechanisms linking daily and chronic discrimination and sleep are less clear.This study investigated coping responses as a mediator linking discrimination and sleep at both the daily and chronic levels.Method: The analytic sample includes 482 ethnically and racially minoritized first-year college students (M age = 18.4 years, SD = 0.45; 77% female; 24% Asian or Asian American; 15% Black, African American or West Indian; 25% Hispanic or Latinx; 35% multiracial; and 1% other) at a predominantly White institution in the northeastern United States.Everyday discrimination, ethnic and racial discrimination, coping responses to stressful events, and sleep were measured with self-reported, 14-day daily diary surveys.Results: Results from multilevel mediation analysis showed that rumination fully mediated the within person-level associations between both everyday discrimination and ethnic and racial discrimination and sleep onset latency.Rumination also mediated the between person-level associations between everyday discrimination and ethnic and racial discrimination and sleep health (i.e., sleep duration, sleep quality, respectively).Although discrimination was associated with problem solving, problem solving was not associated with sleep within or across participants.Conclusions: Discrimination is a daily and chronic social stressor that is associated with impaired sleep health.This study shows that this association is explained by ruminative arousal.Leveraging these novel findings to promote sleep health among ethnically and racially minoritized college students during the college transition, implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed. Public Significance StatementThe daily and chronic effects of discrimination on disrupted sleep health have been well-documented.The present study shows that ruminative responses increase sleep onset latency on days when ethnically and racially minoritized first-year college students experience higher levels of discrimination.Additionally, these repeated ruminative responses lead to shorter sleep duration and impaired sleep quality over time.