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. 2024 Apr 3;12(7):775.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare12070775.

Sleep Habits, Academic Performance and Health Behaviors of Adolescents in Southern Greece

Christina Alexopoulou  1 , Maria Fountoulaki  2 , Antigone Papavasileiou  3 , Eumorfia Kondili  1
Affiliations

Sleep Habits, Academic Performance and Health Behaviors of Adolescents in Southern Greece

Christina Alexopoulou et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Adolescents often experience insufficient sleep and have unhealthy sleep habits. Our aim was to investigate the sleep patterns of secondary education students in Heraklion, Crete, Greece and their association with school performance and health habits. We conducted a community-based cross-sectional study with 831 students aged 13-19 years who completed an online self-reported questionnaire related to sleep and health habits. The data are mostly numerical or categorical, and an analysis was performed using t-tests, chi-square tests and multiple logistic regression. During weekdays, the students slept for an average of 7 ± 1.1 h, which is significantly lower than the 7.8 ± 1.5 h average on weekends (p < 0.001). Nearly 79% reported difficulty waking up and having insufficient sleep time, while 73.8% felt sleepy at school at least once a week. Having sufficient sleep time ≥ 8 h) was positively correlated with better academic performance (OR: 1.48, CI: 1.06-2.07, p = 0.022) and frequent physical exercise (never/rarely: 13.5%, sometimes: 21.2%, often: 65.3%; p = 0.002). Conversely, there was a negative correlation between adequate sleep and both smoking (OR: 0.29, CI: 0.13-0.63) and alcohol consumption (OR: 0.51, CI: 0.36-0.71, p = 0.001). In conclusion, this study shows that students in Heraklion, Crete frequently experience sleep deprivation, which is associated with compromised academic performance, reduced physical activity and an increased likelihood of engaging in unhealthy behaviors like smoking and alcohol consumption.

Keywords: academic performance; adolescents; health behavior; sleep; sleep deprivation; sleep habits; sleep hygiene.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Percentages of students and students’ parents at 5 different ranges of sleep duration during weekdays and weekends.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Box and whisker plots representing a comparison of sleep duration on weekdays and weekends for students./ The lower and upper edges of the box represent the 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively. The lines within the box show the median values. The whiskers depict the adjacent values. (*) denotes a statistically significant difference between the values; p < 0.05.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Sleep duration during weekdays (black columns) and weekend days (light grey columns) for each school class. Pairwise comparisons performed using Kruskal–Wallis test, followed by Bonferroni’s correction for multiple comparisons. * represents significant difference from Gymnasium 1st class for weekdays, p < 0.0001, while # represents significant difference from Gymnasium 1st class for weekends.
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