Effect of Person-Environment-Occupation-Performance (PEOP) Model–Based Sleep Intervention on Sleep Quality Among Parents of Children With Special Needs

Objective: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Person-Environment-Occupation-Performance (PEOP) model–based sleep intervention on sleep quality among parents of children with special needs, compared with conventional occupational therapy.Methods: A quasi-experimental design with convenience sampling was used, involving 30 parents. Participants were nonrandomly allocated by site: Center A to the PEOP intervention (n=15) and Center B to conventional occupational therapy (n=15). To minimize selection bias, both centres followed identical recruitment procedures and inclusion criteria. Assessor blinding was not implemented. Interventions were delivered over 12 weeks (36 sessions). Sleep quality was assessed pre- and post-intervention using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Within-group and between-group differences were analyzed using appropriate inferential statistics.Results: The PEOP-based intervention group showed a significant improvement in sleep quality, with PSQI scores decreasing from 10.94±3.06 at baseline to 5.40±1.72 post-intervention (p<0.001). The conventional occupational therapy group also demonstrated a statistically significant but smaller improvement (11.27±3.41 to 10.20±3.10; p=0.001). Between-group analysis revealed significantly greater improvement in sleep quality in the PEOP-based intervention group compared with the control group (p<0.001).Conclusion: The PEOP-based sleep intervention was more effective than conventional occupational therapy in improving sleep quality among parents of children with special needs. These findings support the use of occupation-focused, contextually driven interventions in sleep management for caregiver populations.