Daily Associations Among Hassles, Self-Reported Sleep, and Impulsivity: Developmental Changes in the Protective Roles of Daily Peer and Family Support Across University

Life and academic stress during the transition to young adulthood often lends university students particularly susceptible to sleep problems, which in turn adversely impact their well-being. While peer and family support can mitigate the effect of stress on maladjustment through sleep, the short-term, within-person protective roles of such support in daily lives remain largely underexplored. Using a measurement burst design, this study investigated these short-term effects on impulsivity—a transdiagnostic marker for internalizing and externalizing problems—in proximal daily processes, as well as their potential developmental changes across university on a long-term developmental timescale. Prospective longitudinal data from two waves of 30-day daily diary surveys spanning from the transition to university (n = 277, Mage = 18.1, 73% female, 68% non-White, 6,340 daily reports) to the junior year (n = 177, 3,985 daily reports) were analyzed using multilevel modeling. The results suggest that more daily hassles were associated with shorter and poorer self-reported sleep on the same night, which were further linked to increased next-day impulsivity. Daily family support served as an immediate buffer in this temporal sequence during the junior year but not in the first year, while peer support showed no protective effect in either wave. The findings highlight the increasing salience of family support in coping with psychosocial challenges during the transition to young adulthood. Strengthening family relationships may be an effective strategy to maintain physical and mental well-being of university students. Future research should leverage measurement burst designs to further investigate how such short-term proximal processes change over larger timescales within a lifespan developmental framework.