Sleep

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education had this headline for a story, "Students With Later Classes Get More Sleep, but Also More Booze and Lower Grades." The study, conducted by psychologists right here in Upstate New York at St. Lawrence University examined students class schedules, sleep schedules, mood, and substance abuse. They found that students who stay up late get more sleep, but they also drink more and get slightly lower grades than students who get up earlier. Intrigued, I went to the study abstract.

First, note the difference in titles. The "academic" title is: "Class Start Times, Sleep Schedule, and Circadian Preference: Preliminary Path Analysis Predicting Academic Performance in College Students." Now, which story are you more likely to want to read? The one about booze or the one about path analysis???? Anyway, what I found interesting is that the motivation for this study stems from the previous studies of high school students that found later school start times were reatled to decreased truancy and improved mood. Was the same true for college students?

The results confuse me. The researchers report that later class times were associated with delayed sleep times (ok, that makes sense). But they go on to say this was related to more missed classes, too. So, students were missing their classes even though they started later. I also found their discussion of night owls and late class times confusing. Which is more important--circadian preference or class schedule? Someone could be a night owl and have early classes--bad mix, or be a morning person and have later classes--maybe not as bad. Guess I'll have to wait for the full study to really understand what they did.