Association of Sleep and Academic Performance

Arne Eliasson; Anders Eliasson; Joseph King; Ben Gould; Arn Eliasson

doi:10.1055/s-2002-23157

Sleep and Breathing, Table of Contents

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

EMERGING RESEARCH

Association of Sleep and Academic Performance

Arne Eliasson¹ , Anders Eliasson² , Joseph King² , Ben Gould² , Arn Eliasson^3, 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

Abstract

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

Full Text

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