A simple intervention aimed at helping college students get more sleep not only increased their nightly rest but also led to measurable improvements in their academic performance, a new study has found.
The research, published in the Journal of Political Economy, examined whether improving students’ sleep could directly influence their grades. Researchers say the study is the first field experiment of its kind to demonstrate a causal link between better sleep and improved academic performance.
“Sleep deprivation is extremely common among young adults, yet universities have struggled to find affordable ways to improve student performance,” health economist Osea Giuntella from the University of Pittsburgh told ScienceAlert.
The researchers studied 1,149 college students across several waves of the experiment. At the beginning of the study, participants were sleeping an average of 6.6 hours per night. They slept for less than six hours on nearly 29 per cent of weeknights, highlighting the extent of sleep deprivation among the students.
For the intervention, all participants were provided with Fitbit wearable devices to monitor their sleep. They were then randomly divided into two groups.
Students in the treatment group were encouraged to get at least seven hours of sleep on weeknights. They received personalised bedtime reminders and were offered a modest financial incentive of $4.75 per night for four weeks if they achieved their sleep target.
Students in the control group also wore Fitbit devices but were not given instructions or financial rewards to change their sleeping habits.
The intervention resulted in a noticeable increase in sleep. Students in the treatment group recorded a 26 per cent increase in the proportion of nights on which they met the seven-hour target. Their overall sleep duration also increased by an average of 19 minutes per night.
Some of the benefit continued even after the reminders and financial incentives ended. Although the effect became smaller, students were still sleeping about eight minutes longer per night compared with their baseline levels.
The researchers then compared the experimental data with students’ official university transcripts. They found that improvements in academic performance accompanied the additional sleep.
Students who received the intervention improved their average course performance by between 0.075 and 0.089 grade points during the semester in which the intervention took place. A similar improvement was also observed during the following semester, suggesting that the academic benefits persisted beyond the intervention period.
The researchers noted that the improvements were relatively modest and said further studies will be needed to replicate the findings. However, they said the results are significant because previous research had largely established a correlation between sleep and academic performance rather than demonstrating that improving sleep itself could cause better educational outcomes.
“What excites me most is that these are relatively simple interventions that could be adapted and tested in many different settings,” Giuntella said.
The researchers suggested that similar approaches could potentially be tested beyond universities, including in schools and workplaces.
