Abstract

The main outcomes of this study were that a significant (p<.05) relationship was found between quality of sleep and subjective sleepiness, sustained attention and subjective mood. It was found that the better quality of sleep is obtained, the less subjectively sleepy, higher sustained attention and more positive subjective mood the participant has. The present study was in line with several other studies undertaken, with many of the findings being reflected in both this study and others. Limitation such as environmental factors and carryover effects may have the data.

Introduction

Good sleeping patterns are an essential part of maintaining health, both physical and mental. Regular good sleep helps to consolidate memory, …show more content…

Participants were instructed to complete the tests while still in their bed to counterbalance environmental effects. Participants would then do the same for a poor night’s sleep and once the participant had collected all the data they submitted it online.

Results

The raw data were collected by participants entering their scores on each test online. The statistic that was used was a repeated samples t-test, done so to test the variance between each of the measures between a good night’s sleep and a poor night’s sleep. For the data analysis SPSS v. 15 was used and the level of significance needed to reject the null hypothesis was .05. The descriptive statistics table (below) contains the means for the measures of sleepiness, the number of participants, along with the standard deviation and standard error.

It appears that participants reporting a poor night’s sleep demonstrated higher times and error rates on all measures of sleepiness, while participants reporting a good night’s sleep reported higher positive effects on the PANAS measure. A trend of subjective sleepiness reported less in participants when they recorded a good night’s sleep than when participants had a poor night’s sleep can be seen. Other trends show sustained attention being reduced in participants reporting a