Synthesis Proposal

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Research Journal 2

What is your topic? Or what are your key words thus far?

Sleep Deprivation

Adolescents

Young Adults

College Students

What is your research question? Have you decided to change it at all? And, if you have, how do I know that the way in which this question is formulated is appropriate to conduct a literature review with a systematic approach?

*Are students more sleep deprived and what effects/health risks can sleep deprivation cause in students of high school/college age?

Does it have life-long effect? Are they sleep deprived because of poor time management, or some other reason, like teachers expecting too much from them?

Have not changed it because this question is working for me and getting me the information I need

And what are the definitions on which it depends?

Adolescents: teen/high school aged

Young adults: late teens

College: 18-25

What is your hierarchy of evidence? And how do I know you going about finding the most appropriate evidence/method for your research question?

Research: I require a lot of research based on how much sleep students get and the effects it has on them

RCT: some students need to keep their same routine while another group is tested to see if a method works in helping them get better quality/quantity of sleep.

Case Control: I need to know a number of different things based off one independent variable (sleep deprivation can lead to…..depression, alcoholism, mood swings, etc.)

Cross Sectional: maybe check other countries to see how their data compares to ours, if their students get more sleep than Americans…what is the most sleep deprived nation?

Mixed Methods: Again, looking at multiple variables to find one common outcome. How much sleep effects the ability to function.

Explaining Topic to Older/Wiser Person

Class Work 2/6-2/8

1.   Baum, K. T., Desai, A., Field, J., Miller, L. E., Rausch, J., & Beebe, D. W. (2014). Sleep restriction worsens mood and emotion regulation in adolescents. Journal Of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 55(2), 180-190. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12125

2.     Research

3.    The study wanted to find out the correlation between sleep and a child’s mood. This research worked best for them because they need to conduct a study and find out information. They took fifty students that were healthy and aged 14-17. The study was only done for three weeks. The first week was the control because they had the students do their own sleep patterns. The second week they made the students spend at least six and a half hours in bed. And the third week they had them in bed for ten hours. The study was randomized, also. When the participants woke up each day, they had to fill out a survey telling their moods.

4.     The results showed that they students who slept for 6.5 hours were actually more angry, tired, confused, and moody.

5.     Only a few less hours really has a great impact on our moods. This study was done in less than a month and it still was able to show these drastic changes.

1.    Moseley, L., & Gradisar, M. (2009). Evaluation of a School-Based Intervention for Adolescent  Sleep  Problems. Sleep, 32(3), 334–341.

2.       Randomized control trial

3.       They created a program to see if school intervention helped students get more sleep. They used two  groups. One was the program class they made up and the other was standard class. They used 81  students whose average age was 15. One class of 41 participated in the study while the other 40 did  their normal routines. They did this over a period of one month and measured sleep patterns before,  during, and 6 weeks after the study. They used this method in order to gather data on whether or not  the better (sleep) educated test group would improve their sleeping habits or not.

4.      The researchers found that their intervention was highly successful and greatly beneficial. They  stated that all the other schools should try to implement some sort of program that taught adolescents  the benefits of practicing better sleep habits.

5.      The interesting thing was that these researchers didn’t do that much, in reality. They simply taught children the benefits of getting a higher quality/quantity of sleep and it worked. This is such a huge issue among this age group, yet the solutions are usually so simple.  

1.   Loessl, B., Valerius, G., Kopasz, M., Hornyak, M., Riemann, D., & Voderholzer, U. (2008). Are adolescents chronically sleep-deprived? An investigation of sleep habits of adolescents in the Southwest of Germany. Child: Care, Health & Development, 34(5), 549-556.

2.     Case control

3.     The study was done in Germany with 818 students, ages 12 through 18. They did a case control because they needed to compare different groups of data and analyze it based off of an independent variable. These students were taken from three different schools. They had to fill out surveys and log for two weeks their sleep based on the directions they were given. The goal here was to get data showing how the place a person live effects their sleep cycle. 601 students completed the entire survey for two weeks. The average amount of sleep the participants got was about eight hours during the week and about nine on the weekends. For the 12-13 year old category, they only received 7 hours of sleep on weekdays during the school year. The researchers found that “91.6% of all students slept less than 9.2 h per night during the week,” (Loessl, 1).

4.     Their hypothesis of students getting less sleep during the week was proven true. Fridays and Saturdays had the latest bedtimes and the least amount of sleep of received in the middle of the week. They did not find any major correlation between where a student lived and the amount of sleep they got.

5.     What was interesting (even to the researchers) was that even though the students got less than the recommended eight hours of sleep most nights of the week, only a handful of them reported being drowsy and incapable of functioning the next day. I personally feel this is because students are just so used to getting so little sleep now that we could function off on only four hours, which is terrible.

1.  Al-Hazzaa, H. M., Musaiger, A. O., Abahussain, N. A., Al-Sobayel, H. I., & Qahwaji, D. M. (2012). Prevalence of short sleep duration and its association with obesity among adolescents 15- to 19-year olds: A cross-sectional study from three major cities in Saudi Arabia. Annals of Thoracic Medicine, 7(3), 133–139. http://doi.org/10.4103/1817-1737.98845

2.     Cross Sectional

3.     Even though it’s based in Saudi Arabia, it’s interesting to see if sleep deprivation is as big of a problem in other countries as it is in America. Also it focuses on sleep’s correlation with obesity, but I still thought it was a good study to be considered. That’s what makes it cross sectional. It is different in the sense that it’s not an American study or exactly what I need, but it still relates to my topic and can give me good information. I like it already because the beginning of the article starts off with how they think getting enough sleep each night is actually really important. These researchers also used questionnaires that that students had to keep track of and turn in. It took place in three different cities with 2868 students between the ages of 15 and 19 who were randomly selected. They took many measurements including their weight, height, BMI, and sleep duration. The average amount of sleep they got was around 7 hours. The study showed that the students who received normal amount of sleep (about 8-9 hours) had a better chance at being the weight they are supposed to be for their height and age and less chance of obesity.

4.     This study showed that there was a correlation between the amount of sleep students had and the risk of being obese or overweight. Those who got less sleep had a higher chance of being overweight.

5.     I didn’t find anything too shocking in this study. It’s not really a surprise that the less sleep we get leads to being less healthy or having a lower quality of life.

1.  Olds, T., Blunden, S., Petkov, J., & Forchino, F. (2010). The relationships between sex, age, geography and time in bed in adolescents: A meta-analysis of data from 23 countries. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14(6), 371-378. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2009.12.002

2.     Mixed Methods

3.     This method was used for this study because it used a variety of categories to get data for one specific topic. They used gender, age, country of residence, and sleep time in participants ages 9-18. Only thirty studies were done and twenty countries were used. The study showed that there was a difference between age, gender, and the country the subject lived in. Typically girls slept 11 minutes longer than boys during the week, and almost 30 minutes longer on the weekend. The older the subject got, the less sleep they got. According to the study, the country effected sleep in the sense that Asian students had 40-60 minutes less sleep than Americans and 60-120 minutes less than Europeans.

4.     In conclusion, the study proved that there is a correlation between age, gender, country of origin and the amount of sleep the student received.

5.     I thought the fact that Asians had nearly an hour less of sleep each night was pretty amazing. That’s seem like a huge gap between these countries. Other than that, the correlation between age (the older kids get, the less sleep they have) seems pretty on point, especially based on my own experience.

Research Journal 1

What was the process by which you narrowed down potential topics to two appropriate ones? And how were these decisions made on the basis of either class discussion, or our required, course textbook (Aveyard 2014), or both?
Was going between obesity and sleep. Didn’t know what I wanted to look up with obesity so chose sleep. “Sleep” was too broad of a topic, based on the class discussion about what makes a topic good or bad. If I made it about teens/college age students, it would be narrowed down and relateable. Also I made it about not getting enough sleep (deprivation) and hope to find out the effects it has on students of this age group

What research question did you choose, and how are I can be sure you're making a reasoned, academic judgement on the basis of chapters 1-3 (Aveyard 2014)?
Are students more sleep deprived and what effects/health risks can sleep deprivation cause in students of high school/college age? Does it have life-long effect? Are they sleep deprived because of poor time management, or some other reason, like teachers expecting too much from them?

What article (or articles) are you basing this question on, and what type of article is it (research, theory, policy, practice) (citation[s] in APA, please)?
 Hershner, S. D., & Chervin, R. D. (2014). Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students. Nature and Science of Sleep, 6, 73–84. http://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S62907- research

Forquer, L. M., PhD., Camden, A. E., B.S., Gabriau, K. M., B.S., & Johnson, C. M. (2008). Sleep patterns of college students at a public university. Journal of American College Health, 56(5), 563-5. Retrieved from http://unr.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.unr.idm.oclc.org/docview/213072079?accountid=452- research

Louca, M., & Short, M. A. (2014). The Effect of One Night’s Sleep Deprivation on Adolescent Neurobehavioral Performance. Sleep, 37(11), 1799–1807. http://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.4174- research
Fritz, G. K. (2015). Editor's Commentary. Adolescent sleep deprivation: Science ignored. Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter, 31(7), 8.-research

Owens, J. (2014). Insufficient Sleep in Adolescents and Young Adults: An Update on Causes and Consequences. Pediatrics, 134(3). doi:10.1542/peds.2014-1696- research

How can I be sure that the key vocabulary of the question corresponds not only to literature in the field, but also to chapter 1-3 (Aveyard 2014)?
 Sleep deprivation alone brings up thousands of results. Adding “adolescents” narrowed it down a little but there is a lot there to work from still. And “college student” narrowed it down further although it takes some searching to find what I am actually looking for. Worked better when I put adolescents and college students together

Based on what your question is, what kind of literature are you going to need? Again, please explicitly reference the text (Aveyard 2014). What is your hierarchy of evidence?
I am going to need qualitative/quantitative research of students and the number of hours they get sleep Most likely expert opinion from the researchers who conducted the studies and maybe teachers and how they handle sleepy students

How do you define your key terms, and how do these definitions link to key journals in the field?
“sleep deprivation”
“sleep deprivation” and “college students”
 “Sleep deprivation” and “adolescents”
“Sleep deprivation” and “adolescents and college students”

Did anything unexpected happen? From you initial search, does it appear as though your research question will work? Or does the vocabulary and/or type of research sought need to be changed?
More results than I thought I would get, question will work, need to start research and see if I can find enough for “causes”, otherwise everything else is good.

Any final thoughts?
Probably will have to add a few more terms to further narrow my process but I don’t think that has to happen until later. Need to maybe further find out what “type” of research I need to do because still kind of confused on that.

Research Topic

I initially had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to pick as a topic for my research paper. I wanted it to be interesting so I wouldn't be bored out of my mind while doing the research. I also wanted it to be relatable. Then, I figured sleep could be a really good topic. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel exhausted 97% of the time nowadays. Sleep is just as important to our health as eating right and exercising. However, I figured "sleep" was way too broad of a subject and I would get too many articles. So I narrowed it down to adolescent/college age sleep patterns and deprivation. I would like to know what the effects are of sleep deprivation on our performance. I also want to know if we are tired because we procrastinate and have to stay up late to do homework. Or if research says that we go out and party or socialize too much. Or if teachers/professors give their students too much to do and the student feels overwhelmed. And maybe I could do some compare and contrast to older or younger age groups or maybe even compare American sleep to other countries. Perhaps we are more stressed out and sleep a lot less or vise versa. I think this will be a good topic because while I am focused on one specific group, I feel there are a lot of other little sub-categories to spiral off of in case I get to a point where I feel I can't right anymore. But they will all be related to the main topic and tell the reasons why we are so tired all the time. The AJPH is still kind of confusing to me. I can tell I am going to need specific wording to get some articles from there. However, the Knowledge Center website has a ton of peer-reviewed/ scholarly articles. I already found the two attached and I think they will be greatly beneficial in starting my research process.

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