Correlates of Sleep Quality: A Pilot Descriptive Cross-Sectional Survey among Undergraduate Students in a Ghanaian University

Abstract

Background and Objective: A gap exists in evidence of the association between sleep quality and the academic performance of university students in sub-Saharan Africa. A limited number of studies have been conducted in this regard, which have mainly focused on medical students, thus neglecting the larger population of undergraduate non-medical students.

Materials and Methods: This pilot study evaluated the correlates of sleep quality and the academic performance of 500 randomly sampled undergraduate non-medical students at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Data was collected using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and a demographic questionnaire. The participants' demographic characteristics, academic performance, and sleep quality were first analyzed, descriptively, using SPSS software. Relationships between participants’ sleep quality and demographic factors, and sleep quality and academic performance were determined using Spearman’s rank correlation. The causation between these variables was then determined using simple linear regression.

Results: Poor quality of sleep was prevalent among undergraduate students with a mean (SD) PSQI score of 6.43 (2.78). The respondent’s sleep quality had a weak correlation with their academic performance (rs = -0.146; P = 0.001), although poor quality of sleep was a predictor of academic performance [R2 = 0.022; 95% CI (-0.640, -0.168)].

Conclusion: Health education and sleep promotion interventions should be used to encourage good sleep quality and practices among students. Furthermore, the findings point to the need for further studies using a larger population.