Objective  To examine the status of sleep duration and trait coping style and the relationship between them among pupils in Hangzhou city.

  Methods  Using multistage cluster random sampling, we conducted a anonymous questionnaire survey among 2 691 pupils of grade 4 to 6 selected from 6 primary schools in Hangzhou city in October 2015. A structured questionnaire on general information and sleep duration and the Trait Coping Style Questionnaire were adopted in the survey.

  Results  Of the pupils, 18.06% (486), 74.06% (1 993), and 7.88% (212) reported average sleep duration of < 8, 8 – 9, and ≥ 10 hours, respectively. The sleep duration differed significantly by gender, location region of the school, and whether being overweight or obesity (all P < 0.05). Higher ratio (79.65%) of pupils in urban region reported the sleep duration of 8 hours; while, higher ratio (21.70%) of the pupils with overweight or obesity reported the sleep duration of less than 8 hours than that (16.99%) of the pupils with normal body weight. The average score for positive coping style (PC) and negative coping style (NC) were 33.12 ± 6.13 and 24.03 ± 7.37 for the pupils. Partial correlation analysis showed that there was a significant correlation between sleep duration and trait coping style after adjusting for gender, school, class, and whether being overweight/obesity.

  Conclusion  The sleep duration of most pupils in Hangzhou city did not reach the national health standards and there was a significant correlation between sleep duration and trait coping style in the pupils. The results suggest that specific measures should be implemented to improve the sleep duration of the pupils.