How does the amount of sleep you get each night affect your academic performance?

Group D3

Alicia Ozuna

Brianna Anderson

Brianne Hendrickson

EDT 180 D

Gary Lewallen

4/25/18 at 4:50 PM
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

Introduction

The topic that was researched for this project was the relationship between the number of hours

of sleep students get and academic performance (GPA). Arizona State University students that

are taking Professor Gary Lewallen’s EDT 180 course were asked the following questions

through a Google Docs Form Survey:

○ What year of study are you currently?

○ What college are you in?

○ What is your gender?

○ How many hours of sleep do you get on a typical week day?

○ What is your GPA?

○ Do you feel like you get an adequate amount of sleep for your best performance?

From the survey, the total number of responses recorded was 158.

Discussion

When looking upon the amount of students and gender there is an obvious majority of female

students. Out of 158 responses, only 1 student recorded their gender as “other.” With about 78%

female, 20% male, and 2% of students who prefer not to say, this sets up the beginning of the

experiment. This will be taken account for and thought about when analyzing and looking at the

following data.

1
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

The next graph shows the number of students in each college. There are a total of 18 colleges at

ASU. About 79 (50%) of the respondents are also students at Mary Lou Fulton Teacher College.

This is very apparent as you look at the graph for there is a dramatic majority in this college.

This also might be the cause of the majority of female respondents since there are more female

teachers than male teachers now a days. There is also a relatively high number (40 students or

25%) of students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. 9 other colleges make up the

remaining 25%. This means that the majority of students enrolled in EDT are from the Education

and Liberal Arts College. 6 colleges are not present in this course or experiment.

2
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

The student’s GPA was also graphed. This graph showed that there is the same amount of

students that have a GPA higher than a 4.1 as there are students that have one lower than a 1.0.

It also showed that about ⅓ of the respondents have a GPA between 2.1-3.0. The majority of the

students (61%) have a GPA that falls between a 3.1-4.0, which is good.

3
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

One important factor was finding out the respondents of the survey’s year of study. When

looking at the graph, it is easy to see that most, and over half the students that enrolled in EDT

are freshman. Sophomores take up about 22% of the population, while Juniors take up 12%, and

seniors 4%. There also are 4 graduate students enrolled in this course which is about 3% of the

EDT population. This also will be taken account in analyzing the amount of sleep students get

and their GPA.

According to the sleep foundation, the average sleep a young adult needs is between 7-9 hours of

sleep a night. Keeping this in mind, when asked the question of “How many hours of sleep do

you get on a typical weekday?”, 45 students get less than 6 hours. Although this seems like a lot,

that is only 28% of the population that responded. 66% get from 7-9 hours of sleep each night

which is recommended by sleep foundations. About 6% of the respondents get 10+ hours of

sleep. The max number of hours of sleep recorded was 17 which was definitely an outlier. The

average amount of sleep was approximately 7 hours.

4
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

When comparing the relationship of gender and hours of sleep, one can see that females sleep

more than males and other genders. Although there were more females that responded, the data

is conclusive. All the respondents that sleep 10+ hours a night are females. Females also have the

greatest number of students that sleep 0-6 hours a night. This is most likely because there is more

data for females. There are also more males that sleep from 7-9 hours than there are males that

sleep less than 6 hours. This is the opposite for those respondents that preferred not to say their

gender. There are 2 students that sleep under 6 hours, while only 1 student sleeps from 7-9 hours

a night. This too can be a result of the lack of data received in that category.

5
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

When comparing the hours of sleep and the college attended, most students in each college get 7-

9 hours of sleep. There are some interesting things shown in this graph. One interesting fact is

Liberal Arts College has the highest number of students that sleep more than 10 hours. Another

interesting thing is that the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts and the Herberger Institute

for Design and the Arts both have a higher number of students sleeping 0-6 hours. The last thing

worth noting is that the College of Public Service and Community Solutions has a tied amount

for students that sleep under 6 hours and amount of students that sleep 7-9 hours. This also could

be caused by the small amount of data we have from that college.

6
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

When comparing the data from GPA with the data received from hours of sleep there is a theme

of getting good sleep helps GPA. 84 students that sleep 7-9 hours a day have a GPA of 3.1-4.0.

The majority of students that sleep more than 10 hours also have a GPA of 3.1-4.0. One out of

every three students that got a GPA that falls between 2.1-3.0 get less than 6 hours of sleep. Most

of the students that get a good amount of sleep each night have a GPA higher than 3.1,

concluding that there is a correlation between sleep and GPA.

7
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

Analysis

When looking at the data and charts, there are many conclusions that can be made. One

conclusion is that females sleep more than any other gender. Another conclusion is that the

average number of hours students sleep is 7. Finally, the majority of students that have a GPA of

3.1 or greater receive more than 7 hours of sleep a night. In other words, having a healthy sleep

schedule is parallelled with having a high GPA. After seeing these conclusions, other questions

arise like:

-Is the data similar among other colleges or universities?

-If so, how does it differ?

-Why do females sleep more?

-Is there a relationship between gender and GPA?

If we did this project over again, we would change the scale on which we calculated the GPA.

The scale we used was confusing and turned out to be more work. We would also make sure we

were more educated on how to use excel because at times it was very confusing.

8
Group D3: HOW DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP YOU GET EACH NIGHT AFFECT
YOUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE?

References

How Much Sleep Do We Really Need? (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://sleepfoundation.org/excessivesleepiness/content/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-

need-0