Samenvatting
Background: Sleep deprivation is a common problem, not only in the Netherlands but worldwide. Students in particular report higher sleepiness than non-students and tend to have the shortest sleep duration compared to other age groups. Sleep deprivation leads to a wide array of issues, affecting mood and cognitive functioning, and has been related to lower school grades and academic performance of students. To counter these detrimental effects, light exposure might give a (partial) solution. Much research has been done exploring the effect of light on sleep, showing the effects of light exposure on sleep timing, duration, and quality. Recent literature showed that light not only affects sleep during the subsequent night but also that sleep timing and duration affect light exposure during the day after. Studies also show that exposure to bright light can improve vitality. Higher vitality positively affects self-reported health and might even protect against losing good health. It is associated with improved life satisfaction and better regulation of mood and emotions. A better understanding of the existence and nature of these relations over time might contribute to tackling the sleep related problems mentioned above.Objectives: This study aimed to explore possible bidirectional relations between light exposure, vitality, and sleep parameters, as well as autoregressive relations within these variables. In this analysis, time spent outdoors was used as proxy for (peaks in) light exposure.
Methods: In this study, a pre-existing dataset was used. Participants were asked to fill in a (daily) sleep diary containing questions on last night’s sleep and time spent outdoors on the previous day. During the day, participants were prompted with an Experience Sampling questionnaire containing a question on current feelings of vitality.
Results & conclusion: Multilevel regression analyses revealed autoregressive relations for sleep, vitality, and light exposure. For each of these relations, higher (person mean centered) scores on the preceding day were related to lower subsequent scores. Furthermore, significant within-person and between-person relations between vitality and sleep quality were found, indicating that higher sleep quality was related to higher feelings of vitality during the subsequent day. In contrast to our expectations, the current study revealed no significant cross-lagged relations between the sleep-related markers and time spent outdoors. The current study can be considered one of the first explorations of the relations mentioned above. More research exploring these relations will be needed to understand the existence and nature of these relations.
| Datum prijs | 31 aug. 2022 |
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| Originele taal | Engels |
| Begeleider | Karin C.H.J. Smolders (Afstudeerdocent 1), Luc J.M. Schlangen (Afstudeerdocent 2) & Gerrit Rooks (Afstudeerdocent 2) |