Freshmen face sleep problems; education helps

Sleep often suffers in a student’s freshman year, but a new study finds that young college students may think their sleep quality is better than it is. The study also demonstrates that a low-cost campuswide media campaign can help some students sleep better and suggests that discussing sleep problems may be a gateway for college health providers to address more sensitive problems.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When Kathryn Orzech attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she participated in drama and choir. Rehearsals that would have ended at 10 p.m. in high school now went much later. Social opportunities around the dorm — card games, trips to late-night snack hangout spots — beckoned but without parents around to wield the cudgel of a curfew.

For a long list of reasons, college freshmen are often subpar sleepers. A new study by Orzech, now a postdoctoral fellow in sleep research at Brown University, and student health officials at the University of Arizona, illuminates some of the factors undermining sleep. The research published in the current issue of the Journal of American College Health also indicates that college students think their sleep is better than it is and that a campuswide media intervention costing less than $2,500 was able to help nearly 10 percent of students find ways to sleep better.

“Students report a lot of issues with sleep quality and disturbed sleep,” said Orzech, who combined online surveys and more detailed in-person interviews to determine the state of student sleep at the large public university in Tucson. Roommates, dorm noise, fraternity activities, and academic stress make college a novel sleeping environment, she found. “It’s disruptive to their sleep.”

Co-author David Salafsky, director of health promotion and preventive services at Arizona, said the study indicates students are receptive to help.

“Student sleep - or lack thereof - is a health issue that hasn't received the attention it deserves, especially when you begin to consider how interconnected sleep is to other aspects of health,” Salafsky said. “Our findings suggest that this is a topic that students want to hear about and want to talk about.”

The state of sleep

Consistent with other studies, Orzech, Salafsky, and co-author Lee Ann Hamilton found that students often scored poorly on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, a standardized measure. In results from online surveys of thousands of Arizona students between fall 2005 and spring 2007, the team found that average scores were consistently higher than 5, the level that indicates poor sleep. In fall 2005, for example, male students scored 6.38 on average, while women scored 6.69.

A typical student bedtime was about 12:40 a.m., and students routinely took 20 to 30 minutes to fall asleep. Because they often woke up between 8 and 8:30 a.m., many students netted less than seven hours of sleep a night.