Second international School On Mind, Brain And Education

2007, May 22-26

USA

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Relationship between self-reported sleep patterns, gender and morningness-eveningness preference in an adolescent population
This study examined sleep patterns of ninth grade students to determine if morningness-eveningness preference and gender are related to amount of sleep or sleep habits of ninth grade students. The procedure included having 54 ninth grade students record their sleep times for a period of two weeks and to take a morningness-eveningness test. Not surprisingly, morningness-eveningness preference results showed a strong tendency for the owl-like preference. Over the study period, the average sleep reported for all nights was 8 hours and 16 minutes. On school nights, the average amount of sleep was 7 hours and 55 minutes while on non-school nights the average was 8 hours and 46 minutes, nearly 50 minutes more. Overall, owls got the most sleep, robins got an intermediate amount, and larks got the least amount of sleep. However, when looking only at school nights, the larks got the most sleep, owls got an intermediate amount, and robins got the least amount of sleep. On non-school nights, the owls got the most sleep, robins got intermediate, and larks got the least amount of sleep. Sleep patterns across the entire week differed for males and females. Females, compared to males, reported getting less sleep on school nights and more catch-up sleep on weekends. The results indicate that the participants may not be getting the sleep that they need.