Sleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students

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.

Long weekend sleep is linked to stronger academic performance in male but not female pharmacy students

“…The main novel finding of the present study is that weekend sleep duration explained a significant proportion of the variance in the cumulative GPAs of male, but not female student pharmacists. Our students also diverge from previous studies in that we failed to observe a correlation between academic performance and weekday sleep duration, 4, 22 perhaps due to early exam schedules, combined with a high frequency of assignments and exams (four exams/semester for multiple courses). Given the lack of significant correlations between academic performance and weekday sleep durations (including the night before an exam), our central hypothesis was only partially supported.…”

“…We did not observe higher sleep inconsistency in men compared to women, in contrast to the work of Okano and colleagues. 4 Thus, gender differences in academic performance in our student cohort are not readily explained by the latter measure. It should be noted that differences across sleep studies in academia are not unexpected, given the unique demographics of students enrolled at different institutions.…”

“…Gender did not significantly influence the number of awakenings, sleep duration, or latency to fall asleep on the weekend or weekday (not shown). The average standard deviation in sleep duration for each student across the survey period (adapted from Okano et al as “inconsistency in sleep duration from day to day” 4 ) did not differ between men and women ( Figure 3A ; passed heteroscedasticity but failed normality tests; Mann-Whitney U statistic 1588; two-tailed p = 0.7788). Sleep inconsistency was not also impacted by gender when the weekend and weekday data were analyzed separately, and it was not correlated with cumulative GPA (not shown).…”

“…Despite the need for early-morning awakenings, anecdotal comments from Pharmacy students suggest that they often stay up late at night, cramming for the 7:30 AM examinations, and then “crash” on weekends by oversleeping. Experts have recommended a consistent sleep schedule as the best practice for good sleep hygiene and superior academic performance, as was recently rigorously demonstrated by Okano and colleagues in students enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 4 and by Phillips and colleagues in students enrolled at Harvard University. 26 The data collected in both of these studies support the view that regular sleep habits improve student grades.…”

“…Aside from adverse effects on metabolism, blood pressure, endocrine function, and numerous other physiological processes, 1-3 sleep loss and irregular sleep patterns are linked to inferior cognitive measures, such as poor memory consolidation and subpar academic performance. 4-6…”