Analyzing the Relationship Between Adolescents' Sleep and Their Academic Performance

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The relationship between adolescents’ sleep and their academic performances or other health behaviors has long been a research project for scientists worldwide. In the readings provided, three out of four group of scientists conducted researches on how sleep duration and/or quality affects students school performances, and the other group investigated mainly on adolescents’ health behaviors, the use of marijuana for instance.

Findings concerning the relationships between sleep and academic performance:

While in both essays Sleep Duration and Cognitive Performance in Adolescence and Understanding Adolescents’ Sleep Pattern and School Performance: a Critical Appraisal, researchers have ended up with statements that confirm the positive relationship between sleep and academic performance, though the latter with part disagreement, in another essay Association of Sleep and Academic Performance, the findings were different. The research shows that the amount of sleep has no apparent effect on the students’ academic performances.

As is indicated in the essay Understanding Adolescents ’ Sleep Pattern and School Performance: a Critical Appraisal, self-reported shortened total sleep time, erratic sleep/wake schedules, late bed and rise times, and poor sleep quality are negatively associated with academic performance for adolescents from middle school through the college years. In this research, not only adolescents, but also pre-adolescents and freshman students in college were involved. After investigating the students’ detailed sleep habits, this research, along with several other researches worldwide, ended up in the same result as described above.

However, apparently not all scientists agree with this conclusion. In another p...

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... Performance in Adolescence put other factors like rise time, sleep duration and sleep quality into consideration, and conducted researches on a larger scale with more participants in more areas. In The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks, scientists collected data over a period of time and built up social networks of the students.

In conclusion, the four researches used similar but various methods to study on the associations between adolescents’ sleep and academic performances or substance abusing, resulted in overlapping or contradictory conclusions.

Works Cited

Association of Sleep and Academic Performance

The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks

Sleep Duration and Cognitive Performance in Adolescence

Understanding Adolescents’ Sleep Pattern and School Performance: A Critical Appraisal

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