Phase 1: Background & Rationale
Explore the existing literature on your topic and establish the rationale for your study.
Research Context
Sleep quality is a growing concern among university students: over 60% of college students in one survey were poor sleepers (Lund et al., 2010), and 77% of medical students in another (Alotaibi et al., 2020). Two of the studies below disagree on whether sleep quality goes with academic performance: sleep measures accounted for nearly 25% of the variance in grades in one class (Okano et al., 2019), while no significant association was found in preclinical medical students (Alotaibi et al., 2020).
Key Literature Findings
Curcio et al. (2006)
Review: students from school to university are often sleep deprived or sleep poorly, and sleep quality and quantity are closely related to their learning capacity and academic performance.
Lund et al. (2010)
Survey of 1,125 college students: over 60% were poor-quality sleepers on the PSQI, and tension and stress accounted for 24% of the variance in sleep quality.
Okano et al. (2019)
Wearable trackers on 88 students in an introductory chemistry class: better quality, longer and more consistent sleep correlated with better grades, and sleep measures accounted for nearly 25% of the variance.
Alotaibi et al. (2020)
Cross-sectional study of preclinical medical students: 77% reported poor sleep quality, which was associated with stress, but neither sleep quality nor stress was significantly associated with academic performance.
Research Gap
Okano et al. (2019) and Alotaibi et al. (2020) disagree on whether sleep quality goes with academic performance, and each studied part of one institution: one chemistry class, and the preclinical students of one medical college. This study recruits across the university and adjusts for caffeine intake, physical activity and year of study.