Summary
Sleep disturbances and insomnia are common in college students, and reduce their quality of life and academic performance. The aim of this meta‐analysis was to evaluate the efficacy of psychological interventions aimed at improving sleep in college students. A meta‐analysis was conducted with 10 randomized controlled trials with passive control conditions (N = 2,408). The overall mean effect size (Hedges’ g) of all sleep‐related outcomes within each trial was moderate to large (g = 0.61; 95% confidence interval: 0.41−0.81; numbers‐needed‐to‐treat = 3). Effect sizes for global measures of sleep disturbances were g = 0.79; 95% confidence interval: 0.52−1.06; and for sleep‐onset latency g = 0.65; 95% confidence interval: 0.36−0.94. The follow‐up analyses revealed an effect size of g = 0.56; 95% confidence interval: 0.45−0.66 for the combined sleep‐related outcomes based on three studies. No significant covariates were identified. These results should be interpreted cautiously due to an overall substantial risk of bias, and in particular with regard to blinding of participants and personnel. Nevertheless, they provide evidence that psychological interventions for improving sleep are efficacious among college students. Further research should explore long‐term effects and potential moderators of treatment efficacy in college students.
The decision to use an anonymous gamete donation in fertility treatment could have significant long-term psychological and social effects for all stakeholders involved. In light of the growing recognition of donor-conceived children’s right to know their genetic parentage, this entails profound ethical implications. This review aims to carve out the full spectrum of recipients’ motives and experiences related to donor anonymity which could serve as an analytical framework for future ethical and sociological research on issues of donor anonymity. This review was conducted following a seven-step approach for systematic reviews of empirical bioethics literature. The characteristics and quality of the studies included in this review were reported. Data analysis was conducted using qualitative content analysis and was informed by sociological functionalist theorizations of ignorance. The 53 studies selected showed a diverse spectrum of characteristics concerning date and country of study, methodology, family type of participants, sample size, and the timing of data collection in relation to the stage of treatment. A total of 22 categories of motives and experiences of recipients concerning donor anonymity were identified inductively and grouped into five main categories. Donor anonymity was identified as a eufunctional form of ignorance, by which the recipients experienced or intended to control, regulate, or protect inter-stakeholder relations. Interpreting recipients’ motives and experiences concerning donor anonymity as a form of ignorance directed toward particular stakeholders helps reframe the discourse on donor anonymity. It is a fruitful approach that can be refined further and applied in future research. This review identified possible directions for future investigations on motives for donor anonymity: the need for more thorough inquiries into the change in recipients’ preferences over time, such as in the form of longitudinal studies and research on the perspective of non-biological parents.
Recent empirical research on the psychosocial implications of donor insemination is increasingly based on data directly obtained from donor-conceived persons. This descriptive study on donor-conceived adults in Germany inquires into their experience of finding out about being donor-conceived and answers the following research question: how do German adults conceived via anonymous donor insemination find out about the means of their conception and how do they experience family relationships post finding out? An online self-administered questionnaire targeting German donor-conceived adults to obtain qualitative and quantitative data was administered between September and November 2020. Fifty-nine donor-conceived adults were recruited via the support and advocacy group Verein Spenderkinder. Participants had been born in heterosexual-couple-parented families, were between 21 and 46 years old, and found out about the circumstances of their conception between 5 and 46 years of age. A broad spectrum of contexts and circumstances in which participants learned about being donor-conceived were reported, such as discovery via medical records, through disclosure as a result of parental consideration of the child’s current life situation or through direct-to-consumer DNA testing. Finding out about the means of their conception was experienced by participants as affecting their relationships with their family members to different degrees and in various ways. This first systematic inquiry into German donor-conceived adults’ experiences expands the literature and provides basic data for further research. Direct-to-consumer DNA testing is identified as one emerging trigger for finding out, warranting future research. The heuristic value of further in-depth inquiry into donor-conceived adults’ relationship with family members other than their parents, in particular their siblings, is highlighted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.