Sleep Diary Study: Sleep Quality, Mood, and Electronics Use
This study uses a four-week personal sleep diary to investigate relationships between sleep quality and daytime functioning in a 23-year-old Hispanic male college student. Drawing on prior research by Bower et al. (2010) and Fossum et al. (2014), the study tracks five daily variables — caffeinated drink consumption, mood, energy level, nap length, and pre-sleep electronics use — alongside six sleep-related measures. Results indicate that hours slept correlated most strongly with morningness and daytime mood, while electronics use before bed showed no clear negative impact. The findings partially support the hypothesis that no strong correlation would emerge among all variables and suggest that generational familiarity with digital devices may moderate the effects documented in prior research.
- Introduction: Research question, hypothesis, and prior literature
- Methods: Sleep diary design, variables, and subject profile
- Results: Four-week trends in sleep, mood, and electronics
- Discussion: Correlations, limitations, and comparison to prior research
- Conclusion: Key findings and directions for future study
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper situates a personal, self-report study within existing peer-reviewed literature, grounding modest findings in a scholarly framework without overclaiming.
- The discussion section uses clearly labelled sub-questions to organize analysis, making the argument easy to follow and ensuring each aspect of the research question receives direct attention.
- The author explicitly acknowledges the study's limitations — small sample size, single subject, unmeasured variables — which strengthens credibility and models honest scientific reasoning.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates the use of a structured null hypothesis in a self-study design. By predicting no strong correlation before collecting data and then evaluating findings against that prediction, the author shows how hypothesis-driven reasoning operates even in small-scale, observational research. The discussion also models how to connect personal findings back to prior research without overgeneralizing from a single case.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a standard empirical research structure: Introduction (research question, hypothesis, significance, and review of prior studies), Methods (diary design, variables, subject profile, and time frame), Results (summary of four graphed variables), Discussion (four sub-questions analyzing trends, conclusions, correspondence with prior research, and unmeasured variables), and Conclusion (synthesis and directions for future research). Total length is appropriate for an undergraduate self-study report.
Introduction
The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) it aimed to identify relationships between sleep and other aspects of human functioning and performance, and (2) it sought to understand how sleep-wake patterns impact daytime functioning. The subject of this research was the researcher himself. The researcher kept a four-week sleep diary to record information pertaining to sleep habits and daily life habits, in order to test the conclusions of Bower, Bylsma, Morris, and Rottenberg (2010) regarding their finding that poor reported sleep quality is predictive of low positive affect in daily life among persons with both healthy and disordered mindsets. Having a healthy mind, the researcher aimed to evaluate the extent to which sleep quality impacted his overall quality of life.
This topic is important because, as Monk, Petrie, Hayes, and Kupfer (1994) show, regularity in one's daily life bears some relation to the development of personality, restfulness, sleep quality, and age. In order to better understand the relationship between sleep and how people operate when awake, this study examined one subject as a starting point for identifying how this relationship might appear in a close and personal way.
This study aims to advance current research on sleep and human performance by focusing specifically on five distinct variables: (1) the number of caffeinated drinks consumed during the day, (2) the mood of the subject that day, (3) the energy level of the subject that day, (4) the length of naps taken that day, and (5) whether electronics were used within one hour of sleep. These variables are all common factors in daily life, yet it is not well established whether they meaningfully impact sleep quality. Fossum, Nordnes, Storemark, Bjorvatn, and Pallesen (2014) found that "computer usage for playing/surfing/reading was positively associated with insomnia, and negatively associated with morningness" (p. 343). In the researcher's own experience, electronic device use close to bedtime had not appeared to be a noticeable factor in sleep quality or morningness. This study therefore also aimed to test the findings of Fossum et al. (2014) and to assess how accurately their conclusions apply across different demographic groups. Because the subject of this study was a Hispanic male, the findings add a degree of complexity currently missing from research on the sleep–electronics–mood relationship.
The research question for this study was: What is the relationship between mood during the day, electronics usage, hours slept, and morningness for the researcher? While the sleep diary recorded additional variables, the four identified in the research question received the primary analytical focus, as they most directly pertained to testing prior research on sleep, mood, and electronics use. The researcher hypothesized that there would be no clear relationship among these variables, based on a preliminary reflection on his own sense of sleep quality and daily life prior to keeping the sleep diary.
References
Bower, B., Bylsma, L. M., Morris, B. H., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Poor reported sleep quality predicts low positive affect in daily life among healthy and mood-disordered persons. Journal of Sleep Research, 19(2), 323–332.
Fossum, I. N., Nordnes, L. T., Storemark, S. S., Bjorvatn, B., & Pallesen, S. (2014). The association between use of electronic media in bed before going to sleep and insomnia symptoms, daytime sleepiness, morningness, and chronotype. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 12(5), 343–357.
Monk, T. H., Petrie, S. R., Hayes, A. J., & Kupfer, D. J. (1994). Regularity of daily life in relation to personality, age, gender, sleep quality and circadian rhythms. Journal of Sleep Research, 3(4), 196–205.
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