Effect of sleep quality on examination performance [Completed]
A Tokyo Techies Student Research Project
Research Adviser: Robin Garhwal
This research was conducted because the student was interested in finding out how sleep quality affected exam results. At the time, the student was using a sleep tracking application every night to gather the necessary data for this study. While sleeping, humans become immobile, so a sleep tracking application is needed to track sleeping patterns as data for this project. At first, the student wanted to know how sleep tracking apps worked, so the student wanted to create a sleep tracking app of her own. However, after the student realized the complexity in building an application from scratch, the student decided to use existing applications to conduct her research. The student was interested in psychology and how human brains work, so finding out how sleep quality affected the brain intrigued her. So, the student decided to conduct a research on effects of sleep quality, length of sleep, and length deep sleep on accuracy and speed/alertness of reaction.
sleep quality ; length of sleep ; effect on exam scores ; sleep pattern
The primary objective of this student project is to research how sleep quality affects cognitive performance speed and accuracy.
Higher sleep efficiency leads to faster reaction time.
- Approach and methodology
a) Track Sleep
Using sleep apps to measure sleep efficiency, minutes of sleep, Minutes of deep + Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.
Sleep Apps used in this research project: “Sleep Time”.
Using “Sleep Time” application to record
- Total hours of sleep
- % Efficiency = [(Hours Light Sleep + Hours Deep/REM Sleep) ÷ Total Hours in Bed] x 100
- Awake/Light/Deep + REM sleep time
b) Take a Cognitive Test
Cognitive tests to measure response reaction time and response accuracy
Conduct a survey to collect results from sleep app and test. Participants need to fill out after tracking their sleep and taking the sleep test.
Data Analysis is conducted to find correlation between sleep parameters and performance parameters
- Results Overview
– Included positive/ negative correlation.
– Included all parameters compared.
– Found correlation in 4 sets of data collected.
- Discussion and conclusions
In this Tokyo Techies student research project, a conclusion is drawn that higher sleep efficiency leads to better reaction time and accuracy.
However, there are possible limitations that is needed to provide a better result for this experiment such as the accuracy in the Minutes of Sleep recorded, the limited participants and the simplicity of the test.
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