Introduction and Method

Introduction

            Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep, sleep is one of the most important factors in your everyday life. Sleep plays a huge role in your mental and physical health, if you don’t get enough sleep it can be very dangerous. Now as a student at a university I decided to conduct a survey on how sleep deprivation can have a toll on academic success. I chose the topic considering the personal ties I have with the certain issue, also it would help to realize how important the issue is among college students and their academics. In one article called College Students: getting enough sleep is vital to academic success the author makes sure to explain that even the shortest amount of sleep can result in something terrifying, “After two weeks of sleeping six hours or less a night, students feel as bad and preform as poorly as someone who has gone without sleep for 48 hours.” (AASM, Dr. Epstein). In college a lot of us might fall into the category of people who don’t get enough sleep do to homework that needs to be finished or even the exam that we didn’t truly study for in advanced. Sleep deprivation is a wide topic that can be spread through many ideas like academic progress, but what does everyone know about it right now?

            “Sleep loss alters normal functioning of attention and disrupts the ability to focus on environmental sensory input” (Davis). Sleep deprivation is no question very dangerous according to many medical personal and even just to the public. The real question I’m trying to answer is how does being sleep deprived effect your academic success? Well Dr. Kushida from the article College Students: getting enough sleep is vital to academic success collaborates that, “College students who pull “all-nighters” are more likely to have a lower GPA” (AASM, Kushida). This means that someone who doesn’t get enough sleep to function which is typically 8 hours a night, has the chance of obtaining a lower GPA due to being tired daily. Also, we know from a different article titled SLEEP ROCKS! GET MORE OF IT! “1 in 4 UGA students indicate that lack of sleep has impacted their academic performance in a negative way.” (University of Georgia). Sleep deprivation or not getting enough sleep a night leads to an increase in mental health issues.

            Since sleep deprivation has been studied and tested for years the topic has really been discussed over and over, which means that everything within the topic is solid. There isn’t truly anything in the topic of sleep deprivation versus academic success that hasn’t been discussed already. By using the research, I have already collected from many different sources, I am able to suggest why my survey will come back with results I have already been clear about.  

Methods

Participants

            For this experiment I sampled 30 random University of Iowa students. These students are both male and female, their grades range from freshman too seniors. From a lot of the research I’ve been conducting it’s overwhelming how many people have answered yes to the question of “Are you sleep deprived?”. The participants of this experiment are in no way a biased sample, these subjects were chosen randomly from an email sent around campus.