The Role of Poor Sleep Quality in Producing Incivility at Work Among Working College Students

Soaring tuition costs are leading a record number of college students to work an ever increasing number of hours while also attempting to meet the demands of a fulltime course load, which facilitates feelings of work-school conflict. Though relationships between work-school conflict and other attitudinal variables, such as job satisfaction, have been explored, a more insidious effect of work-school conflict, the creation of uncivil student-employees, remains unexamined. This study builds on prior work-school conflict research to determine its effect on sleep quality and incivility. We examined working college students to determine whether sleep quality would mediate the effect of work-school conflict on their tendency to behave uncivilly at work. Results indicated that sleep quality was negatively influenced by high work- school conflict and led to higher reports of workplace incivility. Implications for researchers, employers, and college personnel are discussed