Sleep duration, subjective sleep disturbances and associated factors among university students in Korea

Objective of this study was to look into sleep patterns of university students in association with their lifestyle, specifically to examine mean sleep duration, prevalence of sleep disturbances and their correlates. This study also aimed to examine a possible association of sleep patterns of young adults with new media like computers and videos, which were supposed to have a great influence on their lifestyle. Self-reported sleep data were derived from questionnaires administered to a total of 1,414 students of one university located in Chullabuk-do, Korea. Statistical methods such as t-test, analyses of variance, chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression were used for analysis. The mean sleep duration of the respondents was 6.7 +/- 1.3 hr. Of the respondents, 30.2% reported having insufficient sleep. About one third of them pointed to visual media including computers as the primary reason. The proportion of those having some types of sleep disturbances was 36.2%. The risk of subjective sleep disturbances was significantly lower among those perceiving themselves healthy than among those perceiving themselves unhealthy (OR=0.44; 95% Cl: 0.34-0.57).