Dados do Trabalho

Título

Sleep Quality and Chronotype of Brazilian Health Students

Introdução

University students form a subset of the world’s population that appears to be more vulnerable to poor sleep quality and sleep deprivation due to the exhaustive routine of studies and extracurricular activities.

Objetivo

The aim of this work was to study the relationship between sleep quality and some aspects related to the sleep/wake cycle, chronotype and sleep temporal allocation behavior in nights prior to a test with the academic performance of Brazilian university students.

Métodos

This is a cross-sectional study done in 2021 through online questionnaires. Students answered an identification form, the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ), Behavioral Habits Questionnaire, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). We built an online version of all the instruments used and they were disseminated across 5 regions of the Brazilian territory.

Resultados

Here we present the results of the state of Acre, where 107 university students at the Federal University of Acre from courses in medicine, nutrition, public health, and biological sciences participated as volunteers. Mean age was 24.4 (SD 5.5), mean MEQ score was 50.7 (SD 11.6) and PSQI analysis showed mean score of 9.7 (SD 3.3), bedtime (23:30 SD 1h45), waketime (07:33, SD 1h38), sleep duration (6.8h, SD 1.8h), sleep efficiency (88.2%), sleep latency (36.4min, SD 35.4min). Most students had poor sleep quality (62.6%), 17.1% had good sleep quality, and 15.1% had a sleep disorder. Pearson's correlation between MEQ and PSQI scores was r= -0.41 (p=0.0001), students with good sleep quality had a mean MEQ score of 61.3 (SD 10.3) and students with poor sleep quality had a mean MEQ score of 49.2 (SD 10.0).

Conclusões

Therefore, there is a relationship between eveningness and poorer sleep quality. The high incidence of sleep disorders and poor quality sleep in the studied population is of concern. Treatment of sleep disorders and modification of start times of classes to benefit the evening-type population should be taken into consideration.

Palavras-chave

Sleep Quality, Chronotype, university students.