Associations of self-reported sleep disturbance and duration with academic failure in community-dwelling Swedish adolescents: Sleep and academic performance at school

• Published in: Sleep medicine Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 87 - 93
• Main Authors: Titova, Olga E., Hogenkamp, Pleunie S., Jacobsson, Josefin A., Feldman, Inna, Schiöth, Helgi B., Benedict, Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Academic failure; Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Adolescents; Child; Cohort Studies; Cohort study; Educational Status; Female; Habits; Humans; Internet use at night; Male; Neurology; Risk Factors; Self Report; Sex Factors; Short sleep duration; Sleep disturbance; Sleep Medicine; Sleep Wake Disorders - complications; Sleep Wake Disorders - psychology; Sweden; Young Adult; Sweden; Sleep disturbance; Academic failure; Short sleep duration; Internet use at night; Adolescents; Cohort study
• ISSN: 1389-9457; 1878-5506; 1878-5506
• DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2014.09.004

•Sleep problems are common among adolescents living in Uppsala County (Sweden).•Reports of sleep quality and length predict academic failure in adolescents.•Gender impacts the association strength between sleep quality and academic failure. To examine associations of self-reported sleep disturbance and short sleep duration with the risk for academic failure. A cohort of ~40,000 adolescents (age range: 12–19 years) who were attending high school grades 7, 9, and 2nd year of upper secondary school in the Swedish Uppsala County were invited to participate in the Life and Health Young Survey (conducted between 2005 and 2011 in Uppsala County, Sweden). In addition to the question how many subjects they failed during the school year (outcome variable), subsamples of adolescents also answered questions related to subjective sleep disturbance (n = 20,026) and habitual sleep duration (n = 4736) (exposure variables). Binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to explore if self-reported sleep disturbances and habitual short sleep duration (defined as less than 7–8 h sleep per night) increase the relative risk to fail subjects during the school year (controlled for possible confounders, e.g. body-mass-index). Adolescents with self-reported sleep disturbances had an increased risk for academic failure (i.e., they failed at least one subject during the school year; OR: boys, 1.68; girls, 2.05, both P < 0.001), compared to adolescents without self-reported sleep disturbances. In addition, adolescents who reported short sleep duration on both working and weekend days were more likely to fail at least one subject at school than those who slept at least 7–8 h per night (OR: boys, 4.1; girls, 5.0, both P < 0.001). Our findings indicate that reports of sleep disturbance and short sleep duration are linked to academic failure in adolescents. Based on our data, causality cannot be established.