Sleep Research the Purpose of This Study

Sleep Research

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of mood on subjects' perceptions of the adequacy of their sleep, their reports of overall satisfaction / dissatisfaction with life, and the accuracy of the estimations task performance... It was hypothesized that sleep attainment influences the ability accurately judge adequacy of their sleep, cognitive functioning, and perceptions of satisfaction with their lives. The findings suggest that a lack of sleep may result in depressed affect which may cast a negative valence on self-reports. The research suggests additional inquiry into relationship between sleep attainment, mood at the time of report and prior to the report, and other aspects of life, such as job satisfaction, interpersonal relationships, economic status, and general health.

.Method

Participants. The sample consisted of 150 first-year psychology students at Swinburne University of Technology. All of the subjects were fluent in English. Seventy-one percent of the sample was female and twenty-nine percent was male. Of the 106 female subjects, the mean age was 22.27 years and the standard deviation was .61. The mean age of the 44 males in the sample was 23.18 years and the standard deviation was .90.

Instrumentation (measurement). When reporting the amount of sleep they attained, students were asked to estimate how many hours, on average, they slept on a typical night. To measure subjects' perceptions of their satisfaction with life, The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) was used. The scale contains five items to which the subjects were asked to reply as honestly as they could, indicating their agreement or disagreement with the statement by using a 7 point scale. The scale points were as follows 1 = Strongly Disagree; 2 = Disagree; 3 = Slightly Disagree; 4 = Neither Agree or Disagree; 5 = Slightly Agree; 6 = Agree; and 7 = Strongly Agree. The five items to which subjects responded were:

In most ways my life is close to my ideal.

2. The conditions of my life are excellent.

3. I am satisfied with life.

4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.

5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

To assess cognitive functioning, subjects were asked to take The Reading Comprehension Test (RCT). The RCT is a timed paper and pencil test that uses a total of 47 items to measure cognitive functioning. To complete the test, subjects read different excerpts from articles, stories and textbooks. Immediately following the reading of each excerpt, subjects responded to several multiple choice questions pertaining to the excerpt.