The Effects of College on Sleep and the Results on Daily Performance

            The purpose of this research project was to understand the effects the college environment and experience have on sleep, and to examine the results of not getting enough of it. When a student reaches college, they are considered an adult and can do as they please. These young adults are mostly free from parental control and therefore have the ability, and responsibility, to order the day how they want. When a student prioritizes their day, they ensure that what is most important to them comes first. Most students feel that other things take priority over sleep, and therefore do not get enough. The result of a college student being deprived of sleep is not only harmful to their biological, physical being, but also to their social life and the community residing outside of the student’s own space. For example, many people become angry, frustrated, or depressed when sleep-deprived. This anger or depression can be exerted on the community of people the student interacts with and create unkindly events and relationships. Another result of not getting enough sleep is a student’s grades dropping because they fall asleep or are too tired to pay attention in class. The purpose of this project was to further understand and recognize the importance of adolescent sleep in college and the effects it has in life both inside and outside the classroom. 

            In order to attain the information needed to argue my hypothesis, I created a survey to collect data from college students based on their relationship with sleep and the college experience. I used an online site, surveymonkey.com, to accomplish this in an easy and efficient manner. After creating the survey, I sent it out through text messaging on a cellular device to college students attending Stonehill College and surrounding universities, explaining that it was a short survey for a sociology project. Throughout the entire time, I had no problem in organizing and creating things the way I had them envisioned in my mind, and the process of getting the survey out was even easier than previously anticipated. Overall, there were no challenges to the process as it went very smoothly. The survey ended up being a total of seven questions, with one having an optional response. The majority of respondents were students from Stonehill College, while others include respondents attending Boston College and Harvard University. A total of forty-seven students responded to the survey with an additional twelve responses to the optional response question. The amount of people that took the survey more than fulfilled my expectations and the base number of people I had initially wanted (twenty-five). However, there was no problem having more data, and the ability to use more than recommended backs up my hypothesis even more than before.

            The initial findings to my analytical research more than supported my hypothesis in this project. Results from the survey showed a large majority backed the theory that the college experience, both academically and socially, significantly affects the grades of the student as well as community engagement through the loss of sleep. The questions presented to the students taking the survey were as followed: 1. How many of hours of sleep do you get in a week? 2. How many hours of sleep do you get on weekdays (Mon-Fri)? 3. How many hours of sleep do you get on weekends (Sat-Sun)? 4. How many hours of homework do you have on weekdays? 5. Do you find homework significantly gets in the way of your sleep? 6. Does lack of sleep affect the next day? 7. Do you feel your grades are affected by lack of sleep? Nearly 90% of respondents get only seven hours of sleep or less during each night of the week, compared to the weekend where nearly 80% of people got nine hours of sleep or more (22% getting ten or more hours of sleep). These numbers show the little amount of sleep that college students get because of the college experience with it’s social, academic, and athletic environments all being hung above the student as the prime and most important things in college (not necessarily in that order). Another product of the survey was the effect schoolwork has on the student. An eye opening 87% of respondents said that schoolwork gets in the way of sleep, and over 80% of respondents are affected the next day by the lack of sleep the homework causes. One student responded to the question saying, “It makes me tired for early morning classes. It can cause me to fall asleep during the classes and struggle with new material.” Another student expanded on the same idea, saying, “It creates a vicious cycle. I’m too tired to work effectively so I keep losing time.” In the same category, 95% of respondents claimed they felt they did not have time for community service even if they wanted to do it. Due to the lack of time, college students, who could be expanding their worldly knowledge in the community, cannot go out and experience what being an individual is all about. However, possibly the most eye-opening statistic I discovered through the survey (the number surprised me the most) was the response to whether or not the student’s grades are affected by lack of sleep. An incredible 77% of respondents said yes, lack of sleep sometimes or always affects their grades. All of these statistics backed up my hypothesis in that the college environment and the workload placed on them strongly affects their sleep, which in turn affects their grades, social life, and community engagement.

Due to the of the findings the survey conducted, I had no need to change my hypothesis or any aspects of the project to conform to the data. Instead, the data molded around the project and backed up my hypothesis. In addition, my research and responses were generally the same as previous research on this topic. There needed to be a correlation between my project and other research experiments in the same general category in order to show how other parties came to the same conclusion as my own. In the article Mood States and Sleepiness in College Students: Influences of Age, Sex, Habitual Sleep, and Substance Use by Girardin Jean-Louis of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, the evidence from research shows “the demand that comes from academics and social life in college pushes aside the less important thought, sleep, and affects sleep/wake patterns” (Jean-Louis 509). While sleep may be loved, when the fate of someone’s life rests in good academics, and the fun of the social college experience is put in play, the thought of sleep is pushed to the back of the mind. Even when a student may try to sleep, there may be too many things on their mind that stress them out so much that they end up not being able to sleep very well, or not at all. This is backed by a research project final statement article by Lorrie Verlander on Stress and Sleep Patterns of College Students in which “five main areas were found to be affected the most by stress caused by college: depth of sleep, difficulties in waking up, quality and latency of sleep, negative affect in dreams, and sleep irregularity” (Verlander 893). These areas can be accumulated to negatively impact sleep, which in turn significantly change the life of the student who does not get enough. Overall, these two articles continued the grounding of my research hypothesis, supporting it and showing deeper analysis into the outcome of sleep loss.

Behind the classic obvious of how not getting enough sleep is bad, there is a resounding negative that imminently changes things in the person who does not get enough. In this case, college students are not getting enough sleep because of the demands from academics and social life. Students stay up throughout the night studying for an exam the next day. However, this does not actually help the student as much as they may initially think. Even though the student stayed up for hours studying, it intruded into a time when they should have been sleeping. This lack of sleep affects the attention and brain power of the student the next day, making them less likely to do well if they were to have studied around their sleep schedule. Giuseppe Curcio’s Sleep Loss, Learning Capacity and Academic Performance in Sleep Medicine Reviews talks about this vicious cycle of the negative effects of sleep. One of the things Curcio found, “students who were chronically sleep deprived or suffer from poor sleep quality will then suffer from consequent daytime sleepiness” (Curcio 324). From the findings, it was discovered that there was a clear and distinct correlation between sleep quality/quantity and student learning capacity and academic performance. Therefore, no matter how much a student studies during the night, if they invade the time they need to sleep, their brain will not function as well, and more harm than good will be done.

In some cases, even having the time to sleep is affected by the stress college academics puts on students. A 2009 study by Hannah Lund and Brian Reider involving college student/adolescents sleep patterns indicated that “over 60% were categorized as poor-quality sleepers” (124) because of emotional and academic stress causing irregular sleep-wake patterns and insomnia. The data even included that things like alcohol and caffeine were not significant enough to make any real effect in the students’ ability to sleep. The results also showed the students having significantly more problems with physical and psychological health, and suggested in its conclusion that intervention programs be considered. Aside from just pushing aside the times that the student sleeps, college also affects the quality of sleep, which is an important factor when looking at a more in-depth analysis of the actual sleep a student gets.

The depression and anxiety students get from the overbearing work and henceforth a lack of sleep has a significant impact on their social interaction with each other and with the community. A psychological study on depression in college students showed 53% of the students in the study said they had experienced some form of depression since the beginning of college, with 9% saying they had thought of committing suicide in that time (Furr, Westefeld, 98). These numbers are important when considering the serious effects of depression, which can include anything from irritability, sadness, hopelessness, disconnect from friends, no motivation, and suicide. Therefore, many students who may have wanted to engage in the community both on and off campus may find themselves having barely enough motivation to do simple homework at the end of the day. Because of depression, students feel disconnected from their peers, which in turn only makes them feel more disconnected and depressed. Starting from the overbearing work that prevents or weakens sleep, depressions and anxieties can build up to impact a student’s life including academics, athletics, and relationships/community engagement.

Future research on this topic could be extremely helpful in progressing the awareness of the importance of this matter. Things such as interviews with professors and students, mass analytical data, collaborative observation, and experiments between professor-student and student-student interaction can be used to form a better understanding of this very serious trend. One of the most important aspects of my research was how students felt, so a different study could show how professors feel about how their work affects students, and how this correlates with the relationship the two parties have. After all, the relationship between the professor and the student(s) is an important bond that has the ability to easily affect how the teacher teaches their course and how the student learns the material. The sociological importance of this relationship of status and how it is affected by an overload of work/lack of sleep is essential and could be an of interest research for further studies.

In the end, my hypothesis about sleep deprivation in college students was correct, and my research question was not only answered, but extremely supported. The “evidence” of the survey I intended to use showed the true effects that loss of sleep has on adolescents, with the focus being on how college causes it. This project’s main purpose was to ultimately recognize the impacts that the college environment has on sleep, and the negative impact the lack of sleep henceforth has on the life of the student. While it is easy to stray from the path and talk solely about sleep deprivation itself, it was (and still is) important that the light be continuously shown on the fact that college is the center figure in this project. Throughout the project, I consistently reread and applied new information to keep the track following along my hypothesis. Overall, it is great that universities and colleges are enhancing and strengthening their academics to further the education of future generations. However, there are things like the lack of sleep from this overbearing advancement of work that hurt rather than help students. Allen F. Mogensen once said, “Work Smarter… Not Harder.” It is time that the methods of our educational advancements be looked at from an individual rather than institutional level. If these kind of observations can be made, future generations will truly work smarter for the betterment of the world as a whole.

Works Cited

Jean-Louis, Girardin; von Gizycki, Howard. “Mood States and Sleepiness in College Students: Influences of Age, Sex, Habitual Sleep, and Substance Use.” Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 87, no. 2, August 1998, pp. 507-512.

Verlander, Lorrie A.; Benedict, James O.; Hanson, David P. “Stress and Sleep Patterns of College Students.” Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 88, no. 3, Jun 1999, pp. 893-898.

Curcio, Guiseppe; Ferrara, Michele; Gennaro, Lugi D. “Sleep Loss, Learning Capacity and Academic Performance.” Sleep Medicine Reviews, vol. 10, no. 5, October 2006, pp. 323-337.

            Lund, Hannah G.; Reider, Brian D.; Whiting, Annie B.; Prichard, J. Roxanna. “Sleep Patterns and Predictors of Disturbed Sleep in a Population of College Students.” Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 46, no. 2, February 2010, pp. 124-132.

            Furr, Susan R.; Westefeld, John S.; McConnell, Gaye N.; Jenkins, J. Marshall. “Suicide and Depression Among College Students.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, vol. 32, no. 1, February 2001, pp. 97-100.

            Survery: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2S7G3N2