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Objectives: Research on aging has increasingly recognized sleep as a key determinant of physical and psychological wellbeing. The existing literature, however, considers sleep solely at the individual-level. This study constructed dyadic sleep measures and demonstrated their capacity to predict individual-level sleep and psychological distress. Methods: This study analyzed 2 waves (2009 and 2013) of older couples' same-day time diary data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Supplement on Disability and Use of Time. Dyadic sleep measures included: (a) bedtime differences, (b) wake-up time differences, (c) a categorical indicator of couple's sleeping routines, and (d) a categorical indicator of couple's waking routines. Results: The measures indicated substantial discordance in the sleep habits of older couples. Results from multilevel regressions showed that waking patterns predicted individual-level sleep durations. Dyadic sleep measures, particularly sleeping patterns, independently predicted the respondents' psychological distress; controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, marital quality, and individual-level sleep measures. Patterns were more pronounced in the weekend measures. Discussion: Sleep is a dyadic interpersonal process. This study demonstrated that dyadic sleep is a key aspect for older adults' sleep that cannot be reduced to individual-level sleep. Future studies and surveys should incorporate instruments to measure sleep at the couple-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The relationship of sleep to health has been an active area of research in recent years, and the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) expanded sleep data collection in Wave 2 with enhanced core questions and a novel sleep module that included an objective measure of sleep duration and quality. Method. A randomly selected one-third of Wave 2 participants and their spouses or coresident partners were invited to participate in the sleep module. Objective sleep data were collected using wrist actigraphy, an accelerometer that records an integrated measure of motion over short epochs (15 s each). This information is stored and subsequently analyzed to determine sleep and wake periods by epoch. Individuals were instructed to wear the actiwatches for 72hr. Several sleep parameters were derived from the accelerometer. Individuals concurrently kept a sleep diary. Results. Sleep actigraphy data were successfully collected from 780 individuals. Many of the survey-based and the actigraph-estimated sleep parameters varied by age and gender. However, age and gender patterns often differed for sleep characteristics that were both asked and measured, such as sleep duration. Discussion. The survey and actigraphy data provide different information about sleep characteristics. The opportunity to examine actigraph-estimated sleep characteristics in a nationally representative sample of older adults allows novel analyses of the associations of sleep parameters with social and health data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]