Morningness-eveningness preference in Indian school students as function of gender, age and habitat

The aim of the present study was to investigate morningness - eveningness preference in Indian school students as function of gender, age and habitat. A random sample of 2742 school students, consisting of 1487 males and 1255 females, participated in the study. They were divided into four clusters on the basis of their age, i.e. 8 - 11 y, 12 - 15 y, 16 - 19 y, and 20 - 23 y. In addition they were further categorised into two groups on the basis of their place of abode (habitat), i.e. city versus rural. Each student was classified either as morning type (MT) or evening type (ET) or intermediate type (IT) on the basis of his/her performance on a Lark-Owl test, a type of morningness - eveningness questionnaire (MEQ). Prevalence of MT, IT and ET in the studied population was 35.34% (969), 62.73% (1720) and 1.93% (53), respectively. The males and females differed significantly on their mean scores (p < 0.05), i.e. the former group had a higher score as compared with the latter group. The prevalence of IT was the highest in the studied population, irrespective of gender and age. While this observation was in agreement with those reported earlier, other components of our results differed dramatically in that the percentage of evening trait was extremely low (1.93%) and that of morning trait (35.34%) was considerably higher. Further, a statistically significant relationship was discovered between: (1) age and chronotype (p < 0.001), and (2) habitat and chronotype (p < 0.011). In a nutshell, although the results of the present study corroborate with the most of the earlier findings in terms of dominancy of intermediate trait, it does not support those identical reports where the prevalence of morningness or eveningness is concerned. Could this discrepancy be attributed to latitudinal factor? Thus findings reported in this paper definitely open up new avenues for future research.