Daily, Prospective Associations of Sleep, Physical Activity, and Sedentary Behaviour with Affect: A Bayesian Multilevel Compositional Data Analysis

A new study entitled “Daily, Prospective Associations of Sleep, Physical Activity, and Sedentary Behaviour with Affect: A Bayesian Multilevel Compositional Data Analysis” was recently published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise. A summary and citation are included below.

ABSTRACT

Background
24h behaviours (sleep, time awake in bed, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA], light physical activity [LPA], and sedentary behaviour [SB]) may influence long-term mental health through their associations with affective experiences in everyday life. Here, we investigated the daily, prospective associations between 24h behaviours and affect.

Methods
Actigraphy-measured 24h behaviours and self-reported affect data were collected across 7-15 consecutive days in healthy, community-dwelling adults (N=354, Mage=22.61y, 73% female) providing 2872 days of data. Bayesian multilevel compositional data analysis evaluated how reallocating time between behaviours was associated with next-day affect at between- and within-person levels.

Results
Associations between 24h behaviours and next-day affect emerged at the within-person, not between-person level. Relative to the remaining behaviours, more LPA predicted 0.14 [95% CI 0.03, 0.26] higher high arousal positive affect, whereas less SB predicted lower high and low arousal positive affect (-0.12 [-0.24, -0.01] and -0.13 [-0.25, -0.02], respectively) higher high arousal negative affect (0.13 [0.03, 0.24]). Further, within-person 30-minute reallocation to LPA from SB, sleep, and time awake in bed also predicted ≥ 0.03 [0.00, 0.06] higher high arousal positive affect. 30-minute reallocation of time to LPA and MVPA from SB predicted 0.04 [0.01, 0.06] higher high arousal positive affect and -0.02 [-0.04, -0.00] lower low arousal negative affect.

Conclusion
Findings provide stepping stone evidence for identifying optimal daily compositions of 24h behaviours for affective enhancements in healthy individuals. Replacing time in SB with LPA and MVPA for improving affect should be experimentally tested in daily settings and clinical populations, to inform diagnostic and intervention strategies for better daily affect and mental health.

CITATION

Le, F., Yap, Y., Dumuid, D., Liao, Y., & Wiley, J.F. (2025). Daily, Prospective Associations of Sleep, Physical Activity, and Sedentary Behaviour with Affect: A Bayesian Multilevel Compositional Data Analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise,
102997, ISSN 1469-0292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102997.

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