Sleep Study and Electronics Usage Research Paper

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Introduction

The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) it aimed to identify relationships between sleep and other aspects of human functioning/performance; and 2) it sought to understand how sleep-wake patterns impact daytime functioning. The subject of this research was the researcher himself. The researcher kept a 4 week sleep diary with which to record information pertaining to sleep habits and daily life habits in order to test the conclusions of Bower, Bylsma, Morris and Rottenberg (2010) regarding their findings that poor reported sleep quality is predictive of low positive affects in daily life among persons of both healthy and disordered mindsets. Having a healthy mind, the researcher aimed to evaluate the extent to which sleep quality impacted his overall quality of life.

This topic is important because as Monk, Petrie, Hayes and Kupfer (1994) show, regularity in one’s daily life bears some relation to the development of the personality, one’s restfulness, sleep quality, and age. In order to better understand the relationship between sleep and how people operate when they are awake, this study examined one subject as a starting point for identifying how this relationship might appear in an up close and personal way.

This study aims to advance current research on sleep and human performance by focusing specifically on these distinct variables: 1) the number of caffeinated drinks consumed during the day, 2) the mood of the subject that day, 3) the energy level of the subject that day, 4) length of naps taken that day, and 5) whether electronics were used within one hour of sleep. These variables are all common factors in daily life, but it is not well known whether they are impactful on sleep quality. Fossum, Nordnes, Storemark, Bjorvatn and Pallesen (2014) have found that “computer usage for playing/surfing/reading was positively associated with insomnia, and negatively associated with morningness” (p. 343). In the researcher’s own life, he has not found electronic device usage so close to going to bed to be a noticeable factor in sleep quality and morningness—thus this study also aimed to test the findings of Fossum et al. (2014) in order to show how accurate the conclusions reached by these researchers were and whether they apply to all ethnicities. Considering that the subject of this study was an Hispanic male, the findings will add a degree of complexity currently missing from the study on sleep, electronics usage and mood relationship.

The research question for this study was: What is the relationship between mood during the day, electronics usage, hours slept and morningness for the researcher? While the sleep diary recorded other variables for study as well, the four identified in the research question received the main focus of analysis as they pertained the issue of testing the prior research on sleep, mood and electronics usage.

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The researcher hypothesized that there would be no clear relationship among these variables based upon a cursory reflection of the researcher’s own sense of sleep quality and daily life prior to keeping the sleep diary.

Methods

In order to obtain data for this study, a sleep diary was maintained for four weeks. Included in the sleep diary were the following data entry points: 1) a column for recording the day of the week; 2) a section for completing at the end of the day (just before going to bed); and 3) a section for completing at the start of the day (upon waking up in the morning). The end-of-day section contained five variable columns consisting of: a) number of caffeinated drinks consumed that day; b) the subject’s mood, ranked from 0 to 10 with 0 representing all negative and 10 representing all positive; c) the subject’s energy level that day, ranked from 0 to 10 with 0 representing no energy all day and 10 representing high energy all day; d) length of time spent napping that day; and e) electronics usage within 1 hour of going to be—electronic devices included in the checklist for this column included: TV, video games, computer, phone/PDA, iPad or tablet.

The complete-in-the-morning section consisted of six sleep-related data points: a) the time at which the subject went to bed at night; b) the time at which the subject got out of bed in the morning; c) the time it took to fall asleep at night; d) the number of times the subject woke up; e) the degree of morningness experienced by the subject—checklist items included: refreshed, somewhat refreshed, tired, and exhausted; and f) the total number of hours slept during the night.

The subject of the study was the researcher himself: he is a 23 year old, Hispanic male, in his senior year of college. He commutes to school daily.

The variables were measured over the course of 4 weeks total, beginning from January 29th, 2018 and lasting to April 8th, 2018.

The four main variables focused on for this study were two sleep-related variables and two daily-life related variables: the two sleep-related variables were: 1) total number of hours slept and 2) level of morningness felt upon waking up; the daily life variables focused on were: 3) mood and 4) electronic usage.

Results

Graph 1. Hours slept





The total number of hours slept over the course of the four weeks in which the….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/sleep-study-electronics-usage-2169549
   

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