engleski

Residential status and sleep regularity of university students in Croatia

Previous studies have shown that university students delay bedtime and wake-up time, and sleep longer on weekends compared to weekdays. In Croatia many students continue to live with parents during university years. We hypothesised that students living out of parents’ home have more freedom in organising activities and sleep than students still living in parents’ home. Therefore, we compared weekday and weekend sleep patterns of students with respect to their residential status (living in/out parents’ home). A sample of 1020 students aged 18-24 yrs, 1st-4th year of study at University of Zagreb completed a modified version of School Sleep Habits Survey (Wolfson & Carskadon, Child Dev. 1998, 69:875-87). Out of them, 48% were living in parents’ home. The differences in bedtime, wake-up time and sleep duration between weekdays and weekends, with respect to students’ residential status, year of study and gender were tested by means of repeated measures analysis of variance. The results showed that on weekends students generally went to sleep later (M=2:18h), woke up later (M=10:30h) and slept longer (M=492min) than on weekdays (M=24:16h, M=7:49h and M=453min, respectively). The differences in bedtime and wake-up time between weekdays and weekends were greater for students living in parents’ home than for those living out of parents’ home. Namely, on weekdays students living with parents went to bed earlier and woke up earlier than students living out of parental home, while on weekends they went to bed and woke up at similar times. The effect of residential status on difference in wake-up time between weekdays and weekends was additionally modified by the year of study ; the greatest effect was found for the 1st year students. This study indicates that university students living in parents’ home shift their sleep between weekdays and weekends more than students living out of parents’ home. However, residential status did not show effect on students’ sleep duration.

cros-sectional study ; sleep regularity ; residential status

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