Distress, emotional well‐being, and sleep quality in daily life: A dual‐continuum perspective

We examined whether daily distress and emotional well-being form related but distinguishable dimensions, as suggested by a dual-continuum perspective, and how they relate to perceived sleep quality. Evening diaries assessed these variables in 831 university students over 14 days. Emotional well-being comprised positive affect and life satisfaction, whereas distress comprised emotional exhaustion, depressed affect, anxiety, and negative affect. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis supported two correlated within-person higher order factors over a single higher order factor, with a factor correlation of -.501. A Bayesian multilevel vector autoregressive model of order 1 (VAR(1)) estimated adjacent-day associations. Higher-than-usual distress predicted lower subsequent emotional well-being (β = -.032, 95% credible interval [CrI] [-.053, -.012]). Distress predicted poorer perceived quality of the subsequent sleep episode (β = -.057, 95% CrI [-.078, -.037]), and sleep quality reported at the preceding diary occasion predicted lower current distress (β = -.024, 95% CrI [-.043, -.004]) and higher emotional well-being (β = .021, 95% CrI [.001, .040]). The paths from emotional well-being to subsequent distress and sleep quality had 95% CrIs that included zero. The within-person measurement structure is consistent with a dual-continuum perspective on daily distress and emotional well-being.