Academic Writing

for Beginners

Final Exam

学 号 (Student ID No.) 189066017

姓 名 (Name) Guidance Mtisi

专 业 (Program) Electrical Engineering

研究方向 (Research Field) School

导师姓名 (Supervisor Name) 盛腊萍 SHENG Laping

安徽工业大学国际教育学院

School of International Education, Anhui University of Technology

2021 年(year) 11 月(month)
 Research Proposal
By bachelor candidates

At

Anhui University of Technology

Instruction:
(1) Please report your research proposal by providing each section in the following
chart;
(2) Please meet the requirements given in each section and the instructions in the
corresponding course lectures;
(3) When you finish each section, transit this file into PDF;
(4) Please submit your research proposal in PDF file before Dec. 31, 2021.

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 Research Proposal

1.论 文 题 目 Is really university student's sleeping duration, quality and consistency related
Thesis Title with better academic performance?

2.摘要 Abstract: （Length: 100–250 words; Font: Time New Roman; Size: 12 the same
hereinafter）

In spite of the fact that several survey researches have given an account of relationship between
sleep and intellectual functions, there remains a missing of quantitative data using unbiased
measures to directly assess the relationship between sleep and academic performance. In this
work an analytical model is developed which describes the relationship between sleeping
duration and academic performance. Questionnaires were given to 90 students in a software
engineering class (78 of whom completed the study), allowing for multiple sleep measures to be
correlated with in-class performance on examinations. Overall, better quality, longer duration,
and greater consistency of sleep correlated with better grades. However, there was no relation
between sleep measures on the single night before a test and test performance; instead, sleep
duration and quality for the weeks before a test correlated with better grades. Sleep measures
accounted for nearly 30% of the variance in academic performance. These findings provide
quantitative, objective evidence that better quality, longer duration, and greater consistency of
sleep are strongly associated with better academic performance in college.

3.摘要 Key words: （3-5 words）

Keywords: sleep-duration, academic-performance, students, cognitive

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4. 引言 Introduction:

(120-300 words. Please highlight your research question/s , thesis statement/ hypothesis,
and your innovation )

A student's academic performance can be disrupted due to many different reasons. Many people
have tried to study, research and find out all these factors but can there be any relationship
between students sleeping hours and academic performance? [Research question] This
paper is a study or research amongst university students to find if there is any connection. The
pattern of sleep one experiences in a 24-hour period directly correlates with physical health,
mood, and mental functioning. Adequate sleep optimally impacts mental functioning and
therefore impacts students’ performance on examinations and ultimately grades received
[Thesis statement]. One important yet underestimated cause for poor academic performance is
sleep loss (National Sleep Foundation 2007). The relationship between sleep and cognitive
function has been a topic of interest for over a century. Well-controlled sleep studies conducted
with healthy adults have shown that better sleep is associated with a myriad of superior cognitive
functions, including better learning and memory. Sleep is thought to play a crucial and specific
role in memory consolidation. Although the exact mechanisms behind the relationship between
sleep, memory, and neuro-plasticity are yet unknown, the general understanding is that specific
synaptic connections that were active during awake-periods are strengthened during sleep,
allowing for the consolidation of memory, and synaptic connections that were inactive are
weakened. Thus, sleep provides an essential function for memory consolidation (allowing us to
remember what has been studied), which in turn is critical for successful academic performance.
Well-controlled sleep deprivation studies have shown that lack of sleep not only increases fatigue
and sleepiness but also worsens cognitive performance. [My innovation] Many people have
done the research before of how sleeping time affects academic results but I haven't really
found researchers who tried to include if sleeping duration had anything to do with gender.
In my research and questionnaire, I included the gender part to find out if this affects both
male and female in the same way. Our aim in this study was to explore how sleep affects
university students’ academic performance by objectively and ecologically tracking their sleep
throughout the period before the final exam of the semester using a cross-sectional design. An
anonymous self-administered paper questionnaire was administered to students. Questionnaires
were given to 90 students and completed by 78 students. More than half of students obtained
less than 7 hours of sleep at night during a typical school week (54.7%) and a large majority on
the night prior to an examination (81.7%). Almost half (47.8%) felt daytime sleepiness almost
every day. Longer sleep duration the night prior to an examination was associated with higher
exam grades. This paper is divided into 4 sections. The first section discusses the literature
review. The second sheds more light on the methods used to do the research while adding the
results from the research on the third section. The last section includes the discussions and
conclusions.

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5. 文献综述 Review of literature：
(no less than 200 words)

Students academic performance had been widely associated with sleeping behaviors, particularly
in universities. The relationship between grades and sleeping quality concern Is well established
by Alhola P, Polo-Kantola P. (Sleep deprivation: impact on cognitive performance.
Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2007;) The need for sleep varies considerably between individuals
(Shneerson 2000). The average sleep length is between 7 and 8.5 h per day (Kripke et al 2002;
Carskadon and Dement 2005; Kronholm et al 2006). Sleep is regulated by two processes: a
homeostatic process S and circadian process C (eg, Achermann 2004). The interaction of these
two processes determines the sleep/wake cycle and can be used to describe fluctuations in
alertness and vigilance. Although revised “three-process models” (eg, Akerstedt and Folkard
1995; Van Dongen et al 2003b; Achermann 2004) have been suggested, this classical model is
the principal one used for study designs in SD research.
There are many unanswered questions regarding both the functions of sleep and the effects of
sleep loss. Sleep is considered to be important to body restitution, like energy conservation,
thermoregulation, and tissue recovery (Maquet 2001). In addition, sleep is essential for cognitive
performance, especially memory consolidation (Maquet 2001; Stickgold 2005). Sleep loss,
instead, seems to activate the sympathetic nervous system, which can lead to a rise of blood
pressure (Ogawa et al 2003) and an increase in cortisol secretion (Spiegel et al 1999; Lac and
Chamoux 2003). Immune response may be impaired and metabolic changes such as insulin
resistance may occur (for review, see Spiegel et al 2005). People who are exposed to sleep loss
usually experience a decline in cognitive performance and changes in mood (for meta-analyses,
see Pilcher and Huffcutt 1996; Philibert 2005).The previous studies suggest that women cope
with continuous wakefulness better than men. According to evolution, the demands of child
nurturing and rearing in women would support this hypothesis (Corsi-Cabrera et al 2003), but
that certainly does not constitute a comprehensive explanation today. Gender differences during
SD could be due to either physiological or social factors. There are differences in the brain
structure and functioning of men and women (Ragland et al 2000; Cowell et al 2007). These can
be seen in cognitive performance in normal, non-deprived conditions: men typically have better
spatial abilities and mental rotation, and higher visuo-constructive performance, whereas women
perform better in visuomotor speed and some verbal functions, especially verbal fluency (for a
review, see Kimura 1996). Men and women also exhibit behavioral and lifestyle differences,
which are mainly due to socialization and gender roles (Eagly and Wood 1999). Current
literature, however, provides only minimal evidence of differential effects during SD, and does
not resolve the issue of sexual dimorphism in coping with SD.Sleep deprivation impairs
visuomotor performance, which is measured with tasks of digit symbol substitution, letter
cancellation, trail-making or maze tracing . It is believed that visual tasks would be especially
vulnerable to sleep loss because iconic memory has short duration and limited capacity (Raidy
and Scharff 2005). Another suggestion is that SD impedes engagement of spatial attention, which
can be observed as impairments in saccadic eye movements (Bocca and Denise 2006). Decreased
oculomotor functioning is associated with impaired visual performance (De Gennaro et al 2001)
and sleepiness (eg, De Gennaro et al 2001; Zils et al 2005). However, further research is needed
to confirm this explanation, since not all studies have found oculomotor impairment with
cognitive performance decrements (Quigley et al 2000).

Studies conducted by Dr. Dinges (inaugural issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine
2005) and other scientists have shown that cognitive performance and vigilant attention begin to

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decline fairly quickly after more than 16 hours of continuous wakefulness, and that sleep deficits
from partial sleep deprivation can accumulate over time, resulting in a steady deterioration in
alertness. The widely used psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), a simple neurocognitive test
developed by Dr. Dinges and colleagues that assesses an individual’s ability to sustain attention
and respond to signals in a timely manner, has proven to be an exceptionally sensitive tool for
capturing dose–response effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral functioning. 13 The PVT also
reliably detects sleep deficits caused by disrupted or fragmented sleep, and/or poorly timed sleep,
which is important because a growing body of evidence suggests that the continuity and timing
(or circadian alignment) of sleep may be as important as the total amount of time spent
sleeping.Dr. Dinges and his colleagues have found that people whose daily sleep duration is
inadequate, or repeatedly disrupted (e.g., by obstructive sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, pain
or stress, or shiftwork or jet lag), often are not aware of their accumulating sleep deficits or the
toll that these deficits can take on their waking cognitive functions, including their performance,
working memory, cognitive speed, and accuracy. Inadequate sleep also can take a toll on
psychological well-being, significantly affecting our emotional and psychosocial interpretation of
events and exacerbating our stress levels. Studies have indicated that changes in mood may be
due in part to the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional memory—in other
words, our tendency to select and remember negative memories after inadequate sleep.

Shochat et al. (2014) propose that despite the fact that a vast amount of time in adolescence is
spent learning and improving education, there is a large gap in research examining the
relationship of sleep to academic functioning and performance. Brown et al. (2006), Chen et
al.(2014), and Hershner and Chervin (2014) suggest that there is a connection between quality of
sleep and students' academic performance. Giannotti et al. (2002) propose health concerns that
can present in sleep-deprived students, which include depression, fatigue, and difficulties with
attention, concentration, decision-making, learning, and facilitating memories. Orzech et al.
(2011) discuss how daytime sleepiness results in decreased attention and concentration, which
negatively impacts learning and memory recall in students. Chen et al. (2014) states that many
different variables in the students' sleep environment, such as intrusive light or noise, may have
an effect on their quality of sleep. The sleep duration the student is able to obtain determines the
amount of rapid eye movement (REM)sleep cycles, memory consolidation and learning the
student receives (Hershner & Chervin, 2014). Milner and Cote (2008) and Gomes et al. (2011)
discuss how sleep schedule irregularity and napping can affect student's quality of sleep by
delaying the body's natural circadian rhythm and homeostatic sleep drive.

Finally, Brown et al. (2006) discuss how reversing the lack of knowledge regarding behaviors
and lifestyle choices that hinder or promote sleep is promising because the distribution of the
information can improve students sleeping habits. Hershner and Chervin (2014) and Brown et al.
(2006) agree that a sleep education program should be implemented to improve sleeping habits
and hygiene of students.

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6. 研究方法 Research Methods

To strengthen the validity of the external results questionnaire were passed to various students
online. Because of covid physical interviewing of students was not a practical method so it was
carried online.

Participants
90 volunteers were selected from a subset of students who volunteered among the many students
enrolled in the first year at NUST University in Buluwayo participate in the study. Participants
were informed of the study, the purpose and the procedure. Due to limited time I only had access
to 90 students’ volunteers. 12 participants were excluded from analysis because they didn't finish
the questionnaire paper. 40 of the students were boys and 38 were girls. Mean age=19.20 years).

Procedure
An anonymous, voluntary, self-administered paper questionnaire was administered to students
NUST University in Buluwayo. This public institution has a main campus and a satellite campus
located about 40 miles from the main campus but for accuracy I used only one of the campus.
Each student was given a questionnaire with some questions and a table to fill in. There were only
4 weeks from the time the students received the questionnaire to the time there were going to write
their final exam. So, the student's responsibility was to fill in their sleeping routines in the table
every day and for every week of the 4 weeks before the final exam. The table involved questions
like; (1) sleeping time at night (2) waking up time in the morning. (3) Lastly, frequency of
daytime sleepiness report.

Here is an example of the table for only one of the week from one of the student's questionnaire.

NAME: PROSPER CHIKO WEEK NUMBER:3 GENDER: MALE

DAY SLEEPING WAKING UP TOTAL FREQUENCY
TIME AT TIME IN THE SLEEPING OF DAYTIME
NIGHT MORNING HOURS/NIGHT SLEEPINESS
REPORT
MONDAY 11:00PM 05:00AM 6hr LITTLE
SLEEPINESS
TUESDAY 00:30AM 05:10AM 4hr 40min HEAVY
SLEEPINESS
WEDNESDAY 10:45PM 05:50AM 7hr 5min LITTLE
NORMAL
THURSDAY 00:05AM 05:40AM 5hr 35min FEELING
WEEK
FRIDAY 03:00AM 10:00AM 7hr NORMAL
SATURDAY 00:45AM 07:00AM 6hr 15min NORMAL
SUNDAY 11:30 PM 06:00AM 6hr 30min NORMAL

AVERAGE SLEEPING HOURS: 6.14 FINAL EXAM:55%

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From this table it will be easy to calculate the average time each student sleeps every day for those
3 weeks. Comparison are then made with the mark the student get in the final exam. Note, I only
used one course for all students. This is because this course's credit was higher than any other
courses taken in the same semester, meaning more students typically had difficulty with these
courses compared to other courses.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special acknowledgement to Paraklētos H.S who really helped me to gather all this information
and made this research a great success. This research was also supported by Soundmind S.
Specifical acknowledgement to all the students who volunteered to participate.

A SAMPLE OF THE QUESTIONNARE I USED.

Survey of Sleep Habits among Students at NUST University

Part 1. Tell us about yourself by checking (✔) the best response.

1. Your current class:

○P1 ○P2 ○P3

2. What is your age at your last birthday?

3. Sex:

○Male ○Female

4. Race:

○White/Caucasian ○Black/African American ○Asian or Pacific Islander ○Hispanic/Latino

○Indian ○Native American

5. At any time during your pharmacy school career, have you repeated any courses? This does not
include remediation.

○Yes ○No

6. Do you take prescription medication for a sleep disorder such as insomnia or narcolepsy?

○Yes ○No

Part 2. The following questions are about your sleep during weekdays of a typical school week of
the Fall 2013-Spring 2014 semesters. Check (✔) the best response.

1. When do you go to bed?

○Before 8:00pm ○8:00-9:00pm ○9:00-10:00pm ○10:00-11:00pm

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○11:00pm-12:00am ○12:00-1:00am ○1:00-2:00am ○After 2:00am

2. What time do you typically wake up and begin activities of your day?

○Before 3:00am ○3:00-4:00am ○4:00-5:00am ○5:00-6:00am

○6:00-7:00am ○7:00-8:00am ○8:00-9:00am ○9:00-10:00am

○10:00-11:00am ○After 11:00am

3. How many hours of sleep do you typically obtain at night?

○≤1 ○2 ○3 ○4 ○5 ○6 ○7 ○8 ○9 ○10 ○>10

4. How many daytime naps do you take in a typical school week (Monday-Friday)?

○0 ○1 ○2 ○3 ○4 ○5 ○6 ○7 ○ >7

Part 3. The following questions are about your sleep around a DAD examination semester. Check
(✔) the best response.

1. Do you go to bed later than usual the night before DAD exams or IP phase final examinations?

○Never or almost never ○Occasionally ○Every time

2. Do you wake up earlier than usual the morning before DAD examinations or IP phase final
examinations?

○Never or almost never ○Occasionally ○Every time

3. When do you typically go to bed before DAD examinations or an IP phase final examination?

○Before 8:00pm ○8:00-9:00pm ○9:00-10:00pm ○10:00-11:00pm

○11:00pm-12:00am ○12:00-1:00am ○1:00-2:00am ○After 2:00am

4. During the night before DAD examinations or IP phase final examinations, how many hours of
sleep do you typically obtain?

○≤1 ○2 ○3 ○4 ○5 ○6 ○7 ○8 ○9 ○10 ○>10

Part 4. Please check (✔) the appropriate response.

1. How often during the school week (Monday- Friday):

a. Do you feel tired when waking up?

○Never/almost never ○Once/twice a week

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○3-5 days a week ○Almost every day

b. Do you feel daytime sleepiness?

○Never/almost never ○Once/twice a week

○3-5 days a week ○Almost every day

c. Do you feel excessive sleepiness during independent study time?

○Never/almost never ○Once/twice a week

○3-5 days a week ○Almost every day

d. Do you feel excessive sleepiness during class time?

○Never/almost never ○Once/twice a week

○3-5 days a week ○Almost every day

2. What was your overall fall last semester GPA?

○<2.5 ○2.51-3.0 ○3.01-3.5 ○>3.5

3. What was the final letter grade you received in the midterm exam overall

○<59.5% ○59.5-69.4% ○69.5-79.4% ○79.5-89.4% ○>89.5%

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7.预期的成果 expected results

RESULTS
Of the 90 students a total of 78 returned completed questionnaires with minimal data missing. No
data was collected from students who were absent or refused to participate. Sleep Patterns During
Typical School Associations between hours slept and frequency of sleepiness were found: students
who slept 6.5 hours or less tended to report a greater incidence of sleepiness compared to the other
group who obtained more sleep. Longer sleep duration the night prior to an examination was
associated with higher examination grade and semester grade point averages (GPAs).

Graph

From the graph we can see that the more students have more hours to sleep the better their
academic performance. However, from the graph we can see that some of the students despite
having more time to sleep they still had low grades which makes me safely conclude that there are
more factors that affect academic results other than sleeping quality and duration.

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Gender differences
Females had better Sleep Quality and less sleep inconsistency throughout the semester compared
with males, but the two groups experienced no significant difference in sleep duration
Sleep duration and sleep quality were significantly correlated in both males and females but this
correlation was stronger in males suggesting that it may be more important for males to get a
long-duration sleep in order to get good quality sleep. In addition, sleep inconsistency and sleep
qualitrrelated in males but not in females suggesting that it may be more important for males to
stick to a regular daily sleep schedule in order to get good quality sleep.
Females scored higher on overall score compared with males, but a one-way analysis of
covariance revealed that females and males did not perform significantly different on overall score
when controlling for Sleep Quality. Sleep inconsistency and overall score were negatively
correlated in males but not in females, suggesting that it is important for males to stick to a regular
sleep schedule in order to perform well in academic performance but less so for females. No other
gender differences were detected between other sleep measures and overall score

8. 结论 Conclusion：

DISCUSSION
This study was to find the relationship between student sleeping hours and their academic
performance. From the results we have found that longer sleep duration, better sleep quality, and
greater sleep consistency were associated with better academic performance. Sleep is an
excellent indicator of the health status and an element that favors good quality of life but entering
university is a change that highly impacts the student in every dimension, including sleep habits.
A potential barrier for maximizing performance during the university stage is the irregular sleep
schedule, which lead to sleep deficit and high prevalence of somnolence during the day. A
review by Shochat et al. (2014) examined the consequences of lack of sleep among Nursing
students, and confirmed the relationship between sleep disorders and changes in sleep patterns
with a reduced academic performance. Other studies have established that sleep has an integral
role in learning and memory consolidation. Therefore, despite some scientific evidence has
shown a relationship between sleep and low academic performance the originality of our study
was to examine the influence that sleep characteristics exert as well as sleep habits of the
university population on academic performance.

Overall, the academic performance of the students at NUST was suboptimal. When analyzing
how sleep pattern, sleep habits, and circadian rhythms influenced this academic performance, we
observed that all of them may be determine factors for learning, as other studies have done.
Concerning the sleep pattern, it should be noted that most of the students enrolled at the
university slept less than 6 hours per day. Of note, our results seem to establish a relationship
between the hours slept and the academic performance during the first semester, as gathered from

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the academic records. This finding is in accordance to observations by other authors in university
students from Medicine, Pharmacy, or Nursing which also showed evidence between the hours
slept and the academic achievement. In a previous study, we already observed that university
students from NUST attributed the hours slept with academic performance. Indeed, it should be
highlighted that chronic lack of sleep is not only associated with alterations of attention and
academic performance, but also to a series of adverse consequences for health such as risky
behaviors, depression, anxiety, alterations in social relations, and obesity, among others.

In addition, our study has evidenced how the sleep habits directly influenced the academic
performance of these students, and a big fraction of the students with bad sleep habits obtained
poor academic results. Certainly, the sleep pattern and inadequate sleep habits could be related.
Good sleep hygiene includes aspects such as a regular sleep-wake schedule, adequate
environment, avoiding stimulating activities before going to bed, and limiting the use of
technology in bed or immediately before going to bed. In the present study, 30.4 % of the
students had bad sleep habits, characterized by having a clear preference for studying at night,
often losing a night of sleep for work or academic activities that imply go to bed late, and show
difficulties in maintaining sleep routines. An important proportion of students at NUST declared
that they watched television, listened to music, worked or read academic documents during the
last hour before going to bed. In this sense, LeBourgeois et al. (2017) have described the
university population as great consumers of technology, and have associated the frequent use of
technology before going to bed with problems to sleep and daytime somnolence.

Finally, age was another factor that should be considered in the analysis of sleep habits.
According to our results, the students that were less that 19 years of age had the worst sleep
habits and used to have more difficulties in maintaining sleep routines, modifying them on the
weekends and holidays, preferring to stay up late to obtain better study results, and going out at
night without considering that they had to get up early. As other studies, I observed that social
activities were a priority in the life of the university adolescents and the substituting of hours of
sleep for enjoying and sharing activities with friends and classmates did not constitute a problem
for them. These behaviors were added to the physiological delay of the start of sleep that is
typical in this stage of life and might unleash deprivation or a chronic deficit of sleep, maintained
throughout the entire week. The students then tried to compensate for this lack of sleep by
increasing their hours of sleep during the weekend. I agree with previous studies that this
circumstance, far from minimizing or compensating the effects of sleep deprivation, aggravates
them, worsening the pattern and the quality of sleep of the students.

Conclusions
Using the sleep habits questionnaire distributed to students, a majority were identified as having
bad sleep habits. In addition, NUST students included in this research were characterized by an
evening chronotype and a short sleep pattern. Regarding academic performance, approximately
half of the students showed a poor one. A short sleep pattern, bad sleep habits, and younger age,
were independently associated with a higher risk of poor academic performance. This requires
multifactorial approaches and the involvement of all the associated actors: teachers, academic
institutions, health institutions, and the people in charge in university residences, among others.

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