A Break for Evening Chronotypes? Rest-activity Rhythm of College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Keywords

chronotype - chronobiology - sleep - pandemic - students

Introduction: Several activities have been suspended and/or adapted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. College students, for example, had to adapt to emergency remote classes in the first year of the pandemic, which may have changed their rest-activity rhythm according to the chronotype.

Aim: To evaluate the rest-activity rhythm according to the chronotype of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Study performed in 2020 (M1; n = 45) and 2021 (M2; n = 61) with college students between 18 and 30 years old, both sexes, living in Campina Grande and Recife, Brazil. Complete 12-day actimetric data were collected to assess rest-activity rhythm, as well as data from the Horne and Ostberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire to investigate chronotype. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test was applied; Mann-Whitney test for analysis between moments; and the Kruskal-Wallis test, followed by Dunn's post-hoc test to evaluate the rest-activity variables according to chronotypes, considering values with p < 0.05. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee under registration: 36741020.3.0000.5208.

Results: There was a predominance of females (M1:77.8%; M2:70.5%), with 21.7 ± 2.2 (M1) and 22.7 ± 2.9 years old (M2), as well as the intermediate chronotype in both analyzed moments (M1:47.7%; M2:60.7%), followed by the evening chronotype (M1:38.6%; M2:26.2%), with no statistical difference when comparing the parameters between the moments. There was also no difference between the moments evaluated for the rest-activity rhythm. However, when analyzing the variables of the rest-activity rhythm according to the chronotypes, in M1, the evening individuals showed greater activity in the five least active hours (L5) when compared with the intermediate chronotype individuals (p < 0.05). In addition, the evening individuals showed a later activity acrophase than the morning individuals (p < 0.05) in M1. On the other hand, there was no difference for students evaluated in M2.

Conclusions: The activity of the evening college students was consistent with their chronotype in the first year of the pandemic, but with more restlessness during sleep. On the other hand, in the second year, the evening students presented the rest-activity rhythm similar to the other chronotypes.

Acknowledgment:

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.

No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
15 June 2023