Abstract
College environments confer risk for sleep health, with discrimination compounding this risk for marginalized college students, in line with the sociocultural determinants of health framework. Multiracial (alternatively, mixed-race or biracial) college students may be susceptible to poor sleep quality due to their unique experiences of Multiracial-specific discrimination as well as general, everyday discrimination. Further, negative affect may play a role in the discrimination-sleep association. The current cross-sectional study investigated the association of general and Multiracial discrimination and negative affect with global sleep quality among a convenience sample of 193 Multiracial college students. Participants were recruited from a predominantly White institution in 2021 and completed an online survey reporting lifetime discriminatory experiences (general and Multiracial-specific), negative affect (depressive and anxiety symptoms), and past-month global sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index). Findings from a hierarchical linear regression model indicated that covariates (i.e., age and sex) accounted for 2% of the variance in sleep quality. General discrimination explained 11% of additional variance, and Multiracial discrimination accounted for a further 4% of variance and was associated with poor sleep quality (ϐ=.23, p<.001) beyond general discrimination, age, and sex. Negative affect also significantly predicted poor sleep quality when added in the model (ϐ=.56, p<.001), further accounting for 25% of variance. Exploratory ancillary analyses suggested that negative affect may account for the discrimination-sleep quality relation and sleep quality may account for the discrimination-negative affect relation. Findings extend limited research on Multiracial college student sleep health and its associations with both general and Multiracial-specific discrimination and negative affect.