Paper Title
Stay-Home Context During Covid-19: Work, Screen Exposure and Well-Being of Females and Males
Abstract
Abstract: Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic situation changed the population’ habits especially regarding the successive lockdowns that obligated to the stay-at-home work, there are well-being and professional concerns to be examined. This research analyzed how the time reduced outside the household and the full-time online work have impact in adults’ males and females considering the sleep quality and the sleep latency as important traits of well-being. We intend to explore changes in sleep, work and type of electronic devices in new use during the stay-at-home orders.
Methods: We designed a cross-sectional online survey and 127 Portuguese adults answered to their virtual environment work concerning electronic devices in use, periods of exposition to those devices, use of devices before going to sleep. The survey data were collected during the first semester of 2021 in Portugal.
Results: Respondents were from several regions of Portugal. The use of electronic devices after long periods of stay-at-home increased the screen time with impact in sleep onset and in the quality of sleep (good and poor sleep). Delay to fall asleep was significant in women (p < .05), whereas there are differences according to the electronic devices accessed from home. People in stay-home context developed habits such as prolonged schedules of work (more hours observed) and more time spent in bed.
Conclusions: Well-being is affected in females more than in males considering that stay-home setting reinforced the extended access to multiple electronic devices, the difficulty (for females) to fall asleep and worsened quality of sleep (also in females). However, we had concluded that males used more diversity of devices compared to women during online work. People have shifted their lives and work settings which demands a profound research on the sleep habits and general well-being of adults who are working in remote and not in person. Gender, age, family context and the specific pandemic scenarios of each country should be controlled as variables.
Keywords: Screen Exposure, COVID-19, Stay-Home Context, Lockdown, Sleep, Psychology.