58 Time Use: Examining Time for Sleep, Domestic Responsibilities and Parenting Among ​Women of Color in Utah ​

Faculty Mentor: Kelly Baron (Family & Preventative Medicine, University of Utah)

This summer, I had the opportunity to intern at the University of Utah in the Division of Public Health, under the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. I worked on a research study, Sweet Dreams, led by Dr. Kelly Baron. The Sweet Dreams study focuses on sleep health and time use among women from marginalized communities, including Black/African American, African Immigrant, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Latina women. Working between thirty and forty hours a week, my main responsibilities were data entry and analytics. Inputting participant time-use surveys contributed to a significant amount of my work. I completed numerous Qualtrics surveys using the participants’ Time-Use responses, which helped the other researchers on the team access and analyze the data more easily. In addition to the data work, I had the chance to visit a few study participants in person. This was one of the most impactful parts of my experience, it gave me a more personal perspective on the communities we were studying in and helped me connect names and numbers to real lives and stories. I met radiant, hardworking women whose daily routines reflected both the challenges and strengths of their environments. Getting to know more about the role of Community Health Workers plus getting to work with the Community Advisory Board in reducing health disparities was also something new I learned through this experience. Seeing these women uplift these communities while also providing genuine care deepened my understanding of how local scale efforts can drive meaningful change in public health. For my research project, I developed the question: How do social and environmental factors such as household responsibilities, caregiver burden, and parenting, affect time spent sleeping among women in marginalized communities?

Sleep is an important aspect of health, especially for women, who experience some of the greatest disparities due to the many roles they hold within their families and communities. To examine this question, I used time-use surveys from Sweet Dreams participants to analyze the average amount of time spent on various activities, particularly sleep and household responsibilities. My sample size was relatively small, so I decided to use descriptive analysis to approach my research question. The data collection mainly consisted of calculating means and frequencies. I focused on comparing parents to non-parents and how much time each group spent sleeping and performing domestic tasks. As expected, parents reported less sleep and more time doing household work. Additionally, I assessed sleep disturbance using the PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System) tool. Strikingly, the average sleep disturbance T-scores for parents and non-parents were relatively similar. Despite differences in time spent on sleep and household duties, both groups reported sleep disturbances below the national average T-score of 50. These findings suggest that, regardless of caregiving responsibilities, women of color face similar challenges to acquiring quality sleep. The end goal of the Sweet Dreams study is to understand how to optimize sleep health for these women while acknowledging the cultural and societal roles they fulfill.

Overall, my time researching has taught me the importance of paying close attention to detail while also learning how to see the bigger picture. As a researcher, you often face limitations, and if you’re not careful, it’s easy for vital information to slip between the cracks. My focus improved as a result of this experience, and I was able to complete tasks in a short amount of time. It’s taught me to think more critically and holistically when approaching problems or analyzing data.

Living in Utah also presented a huge opportunity for personal development. Though I was excited to come to Utah, I grew up in the South, so I had to adjust to a completely different environment on a social, cultural, and geographic level. I learned how to embrace change and to make the most of my new environment. It encouraged me to connect with people I may have been unfamiliar with, branch out of my comfort zone, and learn from those encounters. Everything being taken into account, this experience expanded my academic perspective and strengthened my internal courage, and I am appreciative of all that it taught me.

Bibliography

Bevans, M., Ross, A., & Cella, D. (2014). Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS): efficient, standardized tools to measure self-reported health and quality of life. Nursing outlook, 62(5), 339-345.

Jackson, C. L., Powell-Wiley, T. M., Gaston, S. A., Andrews, M. R., Tamura, K., & Ramos, A. (2020). Racial/ethnic disparities in sleep health and potential interventions among women in the United States. Journal of Women’s Health, 29(3), 435-442.

Baron, K. G. (2025). A sleep health response to” sleeping while Black”. Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation.