Sleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students
Name
s41539-019-0055-z.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
676.88 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f05a2f911aabccfbffeff28b3dc70a4b
Author(s)
Okano, Kana
Kaczmarzyk, Jakub R.
Gabrieli, John D. E.
Grossman, Jeffrey C.
Date Issued
October 2019
Journal
npj Science of Learning
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Okano, Kana et al. “Sleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students.” npj Science of Learning, 4, 1 (October 2019): © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Although numerous survey studies have reported connections between sleep and cognitive function, there remains a lack of quantitative data using objective measures to directly assess the association between sleep and academic performance. In this study, wearable activity trackers were distributed to 100 students in an introductory college chemistry class (88 of whom completed the study), allowing for multiple sleep measures to be correlated with in-class performance on quizzes and midterm examinations. Overall, better quality, longer duration, and greater consistency of sleep correlated with better grades. However, there was no relation between sleep measures on the single night before a test and test performance; instead, sleep duration and quality for the month and the week before a test correlated with better grades. Sleep measures accounted for nearly 25% of the variance in academic performance. These findings provide quantitative, objective evidence that better quality, longer duration, and greater consistency of sleep are strongly associated with better academic performance in college. Gender differences are discussed.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41539-019-0055-Z
