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BookmarkScienceDaily (June 11, 2008) — Eveningness is associated with not only later phases of a person's sleep-wake cycle, but also with sleep irregularities, more pronounced sleep restriction during the week, and higher sleep compensation on weekends. Evening type college students may, therefore, need a sleep education that helps them adjust to imposed morning schedules, and would probably benefit from later class schedules, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 10 at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
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The study, authored by Ana A. Gomes, of the University of Aveiro in Portugal, focused on 1,654 undergraduates at the university, where classes usually start at 9 a.m. The subjects completed a national version of the Composite Morningness Questionnaire, plus a sleep self-response questionnaire including questions on sleep durations, bed and rise times. The answers were used to compute week/weekend irregularities of sleep patterns.
The results revealed that, more than other diurnal types, evening-oriented students show sleep debt during the week, sleep compensation on weekends, sleep-wake schedule irregularities, and later sleep-wake schedules. These results suggest a disagreement among their sleep-wake cycles and the morning class schedules.
"Our findings, together with other studies on the subject, lead us to firmly suspect that, at least in adolescents and young adults, evening-type students may face a real disadvantage when forced to adhere to morning classes," said Gomes. "Given the inevitable existence of diurnal-type variations from person to person, we may infer that any single standardized schedule is likely to be inappropriate. We share the idea that a wiser alternative would be the availability of at least two schedules (early/later), so that all diurnal types may gain. Sleep education would also be of great value in helping students to better adjust the sleep-wake cycle to externally imposed timetables."
