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Sleep Breath 2002; 06(1): 045-048
DOI: 10.1055/s-2002-23157
EMERGING RESEARCH

Copyright © 2002 by Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc., 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA. Tel.: +1(212) 584-4662

Association of Sleep and Academic Performance

Arne Eliasson1 , Anders Eliasson2 , Joseph King2 , Ben Gould2 , Arn Eliasson3, 4
  • 1White Oak Middle School, Montgomery County, Maryland
  • 2Springbrook High School, Montgomery County, Maryland
  • 3Pulmonary Service, Department of Medicine, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC; and the
  • 4Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland
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Publication History

Publication Date:
26 March 2002 (online)

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ABSTRACT

Poor school performance by adolescent students has been attributed in part to insufficient sleep. It is recognized that a number of factors lead to diminished total sleep time and chief among these are early school start times and sleep phase delay in adolescence. Political initiatives are gaining momentum across the United States to require later school start times with the intent of increasing total sleep time and consequently improving school performance. Later school start times come with significant costs and impact other activities of families and communities. The decision to implement later school start times cannot be made lightly and deserves support of well-performed research on the impact of these changes. A study evaluating the association of academic performance and total sleep time was performed in middle school and high school students in a suburban Maryland school system. Preliminary results of this study show no correlation of total sleep time with academic performance. Before mandating costly changes in school schedules, it would be useful to perform further research to determine the effects of increasing sleep time on the behaviors of adolescent students.

KEYWORD

School performance - sleep phase delay - adolescence - total sleep time

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