Sleep Disruptions during Naval Operations as a Function of Ship-Class, Departmental Assignment, and Paygrade

Workplace productivity can be impaired by many different environmental and occupational factors. These disruptive influences are problematic but also represent opportunities for tailored mitigation strategies that could enhance performance. In the naval context, sleep quality is an especially pervasive impairment. Naval personnel also represent a unique and understudied population as they both live and work within the same austere, industrial-like operational environment. As such, the relationship between occupational environment, responsibilities, and sleep warrants investigation. To assess these relationships, this study used survey data from a large sample of active-duty military personnel (N > 11,000) with three dependent sleep variables in sleep obtained, sleep disturbances, and work-related sleep impairments. Possible occupational-related sleep factors included different ship-classes, different departmental assignments (e.g., administrative, engineering), and paygrade (e.g., officer or enlisted). Statistically significant differences were observed for all multivariate analyses and interactions, indicating pervasive sleep disruption as no occupational category approached the daily recommended 7 h of sleep. However, occupational factors accounted only for exceptionally small effect sizes. The findings suggest that sleep disruptions are a pervasive problem for all naval personnel, regardless of ship-class or occupational assignment, but that chronic sleep disruption better explains sleep-related performance deficits than daily occupational disturbances.