1063 Parents vs. Childcare Workers: Napping Beliefs Across Ages 1 to 5
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction Sleep beliefs are critical drivers of children’s sleep practices; however, research has predominantly focused on nocturnal sleep. Little is known about beliefs surrounding napping, especially during the preschool years when children gradually transition from regular napping to its cessation. Since most preschoolers attend childcare, understanding how parents’ and childcare workers’ napping beliefs align or diverge can provide valuable insights into how these perspectives may influence children’s sleep health. This study examined the differences in napping beliefs between parents and childcare workers, focusing on how they vary according to children’s age. Methods An anonymous online survey was conducted in Quebec from June to December 2024. Participants included 925 parents of children aged 1-5 years and 1,069 childcare workers caring for preschoolers. Both groups completed an adapted version of the Nap Beliefs Scale, which assessed positive (favorable) and negative (unfavorable) beliefs about napping across four age brackets (1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5 years). A MANOVA was performed to compare napping beliefs between parents and childcare workers across the four age categories, followed by univariate ANOVAs to examine group-specific differences in napping beliefs by age and belief type. Results Results showed a significant multivariate effect of Group on Napping belief scores (Pillai’s Trace = 0.14, F(8, 1985) = 41.05, p <.001). Childcare workers had significantly more positive beliefs compared to parents for children aged 3-4 (F(1, 1992) = 44.97, p <.001) and 4-5 years (F(1, 1992) = 112.59, p <.001). In parallel, parents reported significantly higher negative beliefs than childcare workers for children aged 2-3 (F(1, 1992) = 53.98, p <.001), 3-4 (F(1, 1992) = 176.25, p <.001), and 4-5 years (F(1, 1992) = 201.43, p <.001). Conclusion Findings suggest that parents and childcare workers hold distinct beliefs about napping, particularly for older preschoolers. While childcare workers tend to view napping as beneficial across all ages, parents may perceive napping for older children more negatively than younger children. This highlights the importance of fostering dialogue and evidence-based education to bridge the gap between these viewpoints and promote sleep practices that support children’s development needs. Support (if any) This project was funded by the SSHRC.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".