Relationship of Sleep Quality with Selected Lifestyle Factors

Abstract

Background: Less than six hours and more than eleven hours sleep per night is not recommended and sleeping for these periods of time daily can possibly weaken an individual’s health and wellbeing. Worldwide there are a vast number of people who are not meeting these recommended hours of sleep per night. Any one precise reason for the lack of people meeting the recommended sleep durations is not completely known, however individual’s lifestyles and daily routines can have an effect on sleep quality and duration. Increasing Mobile phone dependency, stress levels/mood, caffeine intake, smoking status, and Body Mass Index are all factors which have the potential to cause differences and disturbances in sleep quality and patterns and are all going to be investigated in this study. Aim/Objective: The aim of this study was to explore possible relationships between lifestyle factors, specifically mobile phone dependency, stress levels/mood, caffeine intake, smoking status, and body mass index, and sleep quality in Scottish university students. Methods: The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was used to assess sleep quality in 13 Queen Margaret University Students. Participants also competed the ISMA stress questionnaire to measure stress levels and the problematic mobile phone use scale to assess phone usage. Daily caffeine intake was recorded through the use of a three-day caffeine diary, and participants self-reported body mass index and smoking status. Spearman’s correlation analysis was carried out to determine if there were any significant correlations. Results: There was a significant correlation between BMI and sleep quality (r=0.562; p=0.045). Positive correlations were also seen between daily caffeine intake and stress levels/mood when compared to sleep quality, however did not reach significance. No notable correlations were seen between mobile phone usage and sleep quality. There were not enough smokers present in the study population to get any results for the relationship between smoking and sleep quality. Conclusion: A significant positive correlation was observed between BMI and sleep quality. However, in contrast to other studies, this study did not find any significant correlations between mobile phone usage, stress levels/mood or daily caffeine intake and sleep quality. Further research should be conducted using a larger sample size in order to observe results for the relationship between smoking and sleep quality, and re assess the relationships between other parameters. Key words: Sleep Quality, Lifestyle factors, BMI, Caffeine, Stress, Mobile Phone Usage, Smoking