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Introduction
The National Sleep Foundation and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society guidelines recommend 7 to 9 hours of sleep for young adults (1). However, at least 60% of college students have poor quality sleep and garner, on average, 7 hours of sleep per night (2). Previous research showed that up to 75% of college students reported occasional sleep disturbances, while 15% reported overall poor sleep quality (3). In another work, among a sample of 191 undergraduate students, researchers found that 73% of students exhibited some form of sleep problem, with a higher frequency among women than men (4).
Direct consequences of poor sleep among college students include increased tension, irritability, depression, confusion, reduced life satisfaction, or poor academic performance (4). Evidence abounds of the positive correlation between academic failure, low grade point average, negative academic performance, and poor sleep quality patterns (5). As these complications arise early in the life of these students, they might develop into serious ailments as they grow older (high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke) and thereby create an even bigger public health problem. Because insomnia weakens physical and mental functions in addition to academic performances, reduced sleep quality could also lead to mental issues or vice versa (6).
Erratic schedules and lifestyle adjustments coupled with the strain of daily occupation are partly to blame for the general dissatisfaction with sleep quality and duration, because work obligations reduce hours of sleep among college students (2). However, in light of these consequences, it behooves the scientific community to identify modifiable factors associated with insomnia among college students that could help spur countermeasures or design lifestyle interventions to ameliorate the overall well-being of college students. In this study, we strived to identify environmental, mental, and behavioral factors affecting insomnia among college students. The intersection between behavioral factors and mental health is also evaluated in this work because physical activity, particularly, has been shown to mitigate insomnia (7). Because the relationship between insomnia and some of the understudied mental conditions could be bidirectional and given that cause-and-effect will not be established in this study, insomnia was labeled a criterion variable.
Methods
Study design, sampling, eligibility criteria
A cross-sectional design was used for this study. Convenience and snowball sampling strategy methods...