The Study of College Students and Their Sleep Habits

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Recommended: Review related literature about the effects of the lack of sleep on the academic performance

The blare of the alarm goes off at the early hour of eight thirty in the morning. Tyler, a college freshman, wakes up from his night of sleep. He calculates the hours that he slept and as usual the hours add up to be about five all together. Throughout the course of a week, Tyler averages about thirty-five hours of sleep. Tyler is involved in many activities on campus such as Freshman class council, football, intermurals, and works an average of twenty hours a week. Like most college students, he takes an average 15 hours of course work. During the day he finds himself very fatigued and unmotivated to finish his homework due to his lack of sleep. As the semester comes to an end, he starts to worry about his Grade Point Average because it is so low. He then starts to look at every aspect of his daily routine to see what is causing his low GPA. Could Tyler's low GPA be due to the lack of sleep?

Earlier studies have looked at sleep deprivation. In order to understand the affects of sleep loss these studies temporarily eliminated sleep from one's daily routine. These studies showed that from 2am-7am there was a decline in alertness and performance; while in other times of the day there was an increase in alertness and performance. The studies showed that the peak time of alertness is from 11am-3pm (Walsh, 1997).

Our group decided to look at the sleep habits of college students and how it affects their GPA. The reason we chose this topic is that we have observed the consequences of the lack of sleep received by college students on our campus. In many instances, we, as individuals, have recognized that our loss of sleep has had a negative effect on our own schoolwork. Our group feels that the lack of concentration and motivation...

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...esearch done in this area of the behaviors of college students. The results from further studies could help college students become better overall students.

Bibliography

Egget, Dennis L; Barnes, Michael D.; Trockel, Mickey T. Health-Related Variables and Academic Performance Among First-Year College Students: Implications of Sleep and Other Behaviors. Journal of American College Health, 49, 125.

McKelvie, Stuart J. (1992). Sleep Duration and Self-Reported Type A Behavior: A Replication. Journal of Psychology Interdisciplinary & Applied, 126, 285.

Pressman, Mark R.; Orr, William C. (1997). Understanding Sleep: The Evaluation and Treatment of Sleep Disorders. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Ross, Shannon E.; Niebling, Bradley C.; Heckert, Teresa M. Sources of Stress Among College Students. College Student Journal, 33, 312-317.

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