Parent survey

Problematic infant sleep is a common issue facing parents and can have deleterious effects on many aspects of health and wellbeing for the child, parents and broader family unit. Extinction-based interventions are the most common treatment recommended for problematic child sleep behaviours, and involve ignoring a crying child to various degrees. Multiple sources have described parental resistance to implementing such methods but little is known about their uptake in the community. This resistance potentially leaves parents without support or treatment for sleep problems. This project explored (1) Australian parents’ use of three common, extinction-based sleep interventions (unmodified extinction, graduated extinction, and extinction with parent presence) and (2) views on managing sleep with their young child. An exploratory, mixed methods approach was used to meet the project objectives. An online survey collected 1,344 complete responses from Australian parents (98% mothers) of a 6-18-month-old assessing factors relating to child sleep, including night-waking cognitions, parenting efficacy, psychological distress, sleep information access, extinction use and demographics. From this quantitative data, descriptive and path analyses were used to ascertain mothers’ use of extinction interventions, reasons for use or non-use, and factors which predicted use.

婴儿睡眠问题是家长群体普遍面临的常见困扰，可对儿童、家长及更广大家庭成员的健康与福祉诸多维度产生不良影响。消退型睡眠干预是针对儿童睡眠问题行为最常推荐的治疗手段，其核心为在不同程度上对哭闹的儿童不予理睬。已有多项研究指出家长对实施此类干预方法存在抵触情绪，但目前学界对这类方法在社区中的普及情况仍知之甚少，这种抵触情绪可能导致家长无法获得针对睡眠问题的支持与治疗手段。本研究旨在探索两大目标：（1）澳大利亚家长对三种常见消退型睡眠干预方法的使用情况——即无调整消退法（unmodified extinction）、渐进式消退法（graduated extinction）与家长在场式消退法（extinction with parent presence）；（2）家长对幼儿睡眠管理的看法。本研究采用探索性混合研究方法以达成研究目标。通过线上问卷共回收1344份有效问卷，受访者均为家中养育6至18个月龄幼儿的澳大利亚家长（其中98%为母亲），问卷内容涵盖与儿童睡眠相关的多项维度，包括夜醒相关认知、育儿效能感、心理困扰、睡眠信息获取情况、消退法使用情况及人口统计学特征。基于上述定量数据，本研究通过描述性分析与路径分析，明确了母亲群体使用消退型干预的情况、使用或不使用该类干预的原因，以及预测其使用行为的相关因素。