The Effects Of Sleep Timing, Sleep, And Sleep Duration On Academic Achievement

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University found that more than half of students slept seven hours or less, and almost one in five got less than six hours. In a survey of middle- and high-school students, researchers found that 82 percent said they woke up tired and unrefreshed, and more than half had trouble concentrating during the day at least once a week. Sleep is essential for proper development of the body and brain, especially during the adolescent ages. Due to many factors, teens are sleep deprived and don’t get the sleep necessary for growth. The average teenager should be getting eight to ten hours of sleep, but the average being only seven. Teens tend to have irregular sleep patterns across the week - they typically stay up late and sleep in late on the weekends, which can affect their biological clocks and hurt the quality of their sleep. School and other outside factors play a huge role when it comes to time management and sleep due to the early start-times, the excess the amount of homework, and time-consuming activities, such as sports. The sleep deprivation caused by these factors play a big role in teen’s health issues.

In the article Teachers,Students and Sleep, author Dave Stuart address the effects of different qualities of sleep have on students. Stuart covers the causes for poor sleep and the consequences this can have. The author repeatedly references the work of Harvard graduate Maria Konnikova, along with Shawn Stevenson who has a bachelor's degree, thus they appear to be reliable sources. Stuart cover the negative effects of artificial light close to sleep, and the many positive effects of regularity in other activities on the sleep cycle. Dave Stuart makes his readers reevaluate how important sleep is.

Students entering college face newfound responsibilities. This causes students to lose sleep, as to meet the demands of everyday life. These changes can bring about many consequences for the student. According to Buboltz (2001), “... of college students, only 36% reported being completely free of any sleep disturbance while over 30% reported some type of sleep difficulty. Buboltz, Brown and Soper (2001) found similar results with over 70% of the students surveyed reporting some type of sleep difficulty on a regular basis”. As one can gather from these results, sleep disturbances are highly prevalent amongst college students. There is a correlation to sleep disturbances and grades. Those who do not get the suggested eight hours of sleep a night typically perform worse in school than those who do get eight hours of sleep a night (Hershner, 2015). This may be due to the fact that those who are able to reach REM (rapid eye movement) during sleep, are more likely to remember what it is

Sleep is an essential fuel in balancing a college student’s performance; being crucial for learning, and physical and mental health. The consistency of a good quantity of sleep (8 to 9 hours) lays great importance beyond many of a college student; yet progressively, sleep deprivation among college students is still at its worse and has not changed in college students since the olden days, when today it is still not healthy. This ultimately factors into a college student’s grade point average ( consequently lowering it), “increased risk of academic failure, compromised learning, impaired mood, and increased risk of motor vehicle accidents”[1] Though, students tend to prioritize their matters in work, homework,

A good night’s sleep for the average teenager is from 8 1/2-10 hours of sleep. There are many problems that can happen because of sleep loss, such as depression, weight gain, and irritability, but can sleep affect one’s grades in school? I wanted to conduct a survey to find out if this was true.

All parents know that waking their high school children at six-thirty is not unlike arousing a hibernating bear; they moan and groan, never get up the first time, and all bystanders are in immediate danger of their lethargic outbursts. What is generally unknown is that while teenagers are infamous for their poor relationships with mornings, there is an underlying cause in their physiology that prompts them to act this way. Changes in teenagers’ biological functioning impede their time getting up in the early morning to get to school; this means that high school students are especially affected by this developmental alteration and suffer greatly from school’s schedules. “A review of the scientific literature by a work group composed of representatives from the AAS, CDC, SRS, and AADSM found that later high school start times are associated with positive

2014). It seems that constantly there are minimum attention times in different years, and the first day of week always has the lowest working potential. In contrast, the day before last day of week has the highest working potential (Sharifi, 1998). Since chronotype (morningness-eveningness) and physiological rhythms have a significant role in cognitive processes especially attention, and since the simultaneous effect of these factors on attention performance isn’t explored yet, the present paper aims to answer these questions: 1) Is the preschooler’s attention performance different during day hours and weekdays in educational environment? 2) Is morning preschooler’s attention performance different during day hours and weekdays in educational environment in comparison with an intermediate and evening

Many studies have found a direct relationship with sleep and academic performance. “Higher course grades and GPAs are associated with longer durations of sleep on exam nights” (Zeek 1-8). Another

May 30, 2015, marked the end of my high school career, and as I walked the graduation line, two things kept ringing in my head, “No more waking at 5:00am, and I no longer have to catch the bus at 6:17am,” which made me really happy. Imagine how many high school students across the United States feel the same after high school or during twelfth grade. Over the years, early school start times has been attributed to some of the reasons why students have been unable to perform well because they have been deprived of sleep. Sleep is an essential part of our daily lives and without it, we will be unable to function, as it is known that sleep is needed for optimum performance. It is one of the factors that determines how much effort we put into our daily activities, and it has several health benefits on our minds asides from the obvious ones known to people; moreover, one might conclude that it determines a whole lot of things pertaining to our daily lives. Despite the fact that we are aware of the many effects and benefits of sleep, most students in the United States are denied these benefits through early school start times, and this has several adverse effects on students academically and mentally. Schools should start later in the morning as early school start times impairs the performance of students greatly, affects students’ cognitive abilities, and denies students an adequate amount of sleep. (Finley).

Adolescence is an important time for physical, cognitive, and emotional changes in behavior, a time in which one’s developmental process is continually challenged by new experiences and abilities (Wolfson and Carskadon 875-87). Sleep is a crucial aspect in adolescent development. In this stage, they often struggle with getting the necessary amount of rest needed each day due to late night studying and assignments during school nights. In more than 40 states, at least 75 percent of public schools start earlier than 8:30 a.m., according to the CDC’s report (Richmond). As children grow into adolescents, they tend to experience changes in their sleep-wake cycle, causing them to exhibit a natural preference to go to bed later and wake up later in the day (Carskadon 258-62; Dement & Vaughan).

Sleep is something that is important for daily functioning, without it, we can feel irritable, confused, and of course, tired. However these are just the minor side effects, more serious are depression, increased risk of heart attack, and high blood pressure. Even though students are aware that a lack of sleep isn’t healthy for their bodies, they do it anyway. Although at times it’s beyond their control, there are also plenty of times when students voluntarily choose to get less sleep. For this study, we expected to find a relationship between the amount of sleep students get and the attitude they have towards their school performance. Simply put, if someone gets a lot of sleep, they’ll have a more positive attitude towards their performance. While side effects like tiredness and confusion are a bit more obvious, overall negativity may not be as obvious. Students getting a lack of sleep may be experiencing negativity and not even realize it. That being said, our results revealed that their wasn’t a relationship between the amount of sleep students receive and their attitudes about school. It did appear that the more sleep students got the more positive they were, but the it wasn’t significant enough to report.

We will use a simple questionnaire that was used in the Emmons and Mcullough (2003) study to operationalize the sleep variable. The questionnaire will ask participants three questions. The first question will be a close-ended question that asks participants to rate the quality of sleep they received the previous night on a scale of 1 (restless) to 5 (restful). The second question will be open-ended, asking participants to indicate the hours of sleep they had the previous night. Hours of sleep will be calculated as the total hours in bed minus time spent awake. Our last question will be an optional and open-ended question that will ask participants if they

As the starting time for school increases once leaving elementary school, students face the biological struggle of physiological changes due to puberty. According to “Adolescent Sleep Needs and School Performance”(1998), puberty demands more sleep, at least a total of 8 hours of sleep compared to an adult; they normally require 6 hours. Along with a greater requirement of sleep, the circadian rhythms of the adolescent change as well. The circadian cycle plays a biological part as to when people fall asleep and when people wake up naturally, for example, naturally the human body goes to bed when it’s night and wakes when the sun is out. Due to a greater need of sleep, and perplexing circadian cycles, adolescents become more anxious, have

Insufficient and irregular sleep has been rated the top impediment to college students’ academic performance (Ye, Johnson, Keane, Manasia, Gregas, 2015). Although it is documented that for centuries students’ academic performance has been negatively affected by sleep disturbance, college students continue to have irregular sleep schedule and undergo self-imposed sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation in college-age students tend to occur for multiple different reasons. Some of the factors that affect college students’ sleeping habits include late-night activities, work overload, noisy living conditions, inconsistently early-morning classes, and circadian rhythm imbalance (Bubolz et al, 2009). While some of these reasons are physiological, the behavioral components is extremely problematic on college campuses (Hershner, Chervin, 2014). This section will examine some of the causes of total and partial sleep deprivation as it relates to some common behaviors of college students.

Dean, K., Lowry, M., Manders, K. (2010). The link between sleep quantity and academic performance for the college student. Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota. Retrieved from