Evening-type College Students On Early Daytime Class Schedules At A Disadvantage

The study, authored by Ana A. Gomes, of the University of Aveiro in Portugal, focused on 1,654 undergraduates at the university, where classes usually start at 9 a.m. The subjects completed a national version of the Composite Morningness Questionnaire, plus a sleep self-response questionnaire including questions on sleep durations, bed and rise times. The answers were used to compute week/weekend irregularities of sleep patterns.

The results revealed that, more than other diurnal types, evening-oriented students show sleep debt during the week, sleep compensation on weekends, sleep-wake schedule irregularities, and later sleep-wake schedules. These results suggest a disagreement among their sleep-wake cycles and the morning class schedules.

"Our findings, together with other studies on the subject, lead us to firmly suspect that, at least in adolescents and young adults, evening-type students may face a real disadvantage when forced to adhere to morning classes," said Gomes. "Given the inevitable existence of diurnal-type variations from person to person, we may infer that any single standardized schedule is likely to be inappropriate. We share the idea that a wiser alternative would be the availability of at least two schedules (early/later), so that all diurnal types may gain. Sleep education would also be of great value in helping students to better adjust the sleep-wake cycle to externally imposed timetables."