BA PLAN: Sleeping More, Stressing Less

1. BA PLAN: Sleeping More, Stressing Less Sarah Kim

2. How can sleep affect stress, anxiety, and procrastination levels? • Many studies support associations between lack of sleep with stress and anxiety, and vice versa. • Positive correlations • (Lund, Reider, Whiting, & Prichard, 2010; Misra & McKean, 2000; Ross, Neibling, & Heckert, 1999; Wolfson, 2010) • Having healthy sleeping habits can promote mental well-being • (Howell, Digdon, Buro, & Sheptycki, 2008) • Relationship between procrastination levels and time preferences. • When to take care of business • When to wake up or go to bed • (FranziscoDíaz-Morales, Ferrari, & Cohen, 2002)

3. University Student Sleep Study • Participants: • University students 17-24 years of age. • Measured: • Sleep patterns and relationship to behavior. • Results: • Low amounts of sleep are followed by symptoms of emotional disturbances • (Lund, Reider, Whiting, & Prichard, 2010)

4. Sleep Quality Relates to Overall Well-being • Participants: • 305 undergraduate students • Measured: • Mental health and sleeping conditions • Results: • Students with healthy sleeping habits scored higher on mental health assessments • (Howell, Digdon, Buro, & Sheptycki, 2008)

5. Prominent Origins of College Student Stress • Participants: • 100 college students • Measured: • Student Stress Survey items • “Interpersonal”, “Intrapersonal”, “Academic” & “Environmental” • Results: • Change in sleeping patterns was the most significant source of stress • (Ross, Neibling, & Heckert, 1999)

6. Introducing Procrastination • Definition: • Putting off a time-sensitive action until one begins to feel unsettled • (Ferrari, 1992). • Research provided evidence for relationship between time preferences & procrastination tendencies • (Díaz-Morales, Ferrari, & Cohen, 2008) • Another study contributed that stress is identified with procrastination in students. • Stress moderates time preference and procrastination associations. • (Hess, Sherman, & Goodman, 2000)

7. Conclusion of Literary Research: • If poor sleeping habits correlates closest with measurements of anxiety and stress, and procrastination is a probable result of stress, then practicing better sleeping habits should also cut down on procrastination.

8. Hypothesis: Getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night will reduce stress and anxiety levels, as well as decrease level of procrastination. Independent Variable Dependent Variables Level of stress Level of anxiety Level of procrastination • Hours slept each night

9. Participant: • One 20-year old female participant of mixed race • 3rd year of college • No exclusion criteria

10. Measures: DASS-21 Scale Lay’s Procrastination Scale Measures procrastination (20 items) Rating Scale (1-5) for each item 1 – extremely uncharacteristic 2 – moderately uncharacteristic 3 – neutral 4 – moderately characteristic 5 – extremely characteristic Example items: Procrastinative Behavior: “I often find myself performing tasks that I had intended to do days before” Reverse-Scored: “When it is time to get up in the morning, I most often get right out of bed” • Measures depression, anxiety, and stress (7 items each) • Rating scale (0-3) for each item • 0 – did not apply to me at all • 1 – applied to me to some degree • 2 – applied to me a considerable degree • 3 – applied to me most of the time • Example items: • Depression: “I couldn’t seem to experience any positive feeling at all” • Anxiety: “I was aware of dryness of my mouth” • Stress: “I felt that I was using a lot of nervous energy”

11. Procedure: • Collect baseline data for DASS-21 and Procrastination Scale measures • Attempt to sleep 7 hours each night, 5 nights a week (Monday-Friday) for 6 weeks • Record number of hours slept the previous night, rounding to nearest whole hour • After trial period is over, administer both tests once more and collect post-test data.

12. Results • Successfully engaged in BA Plan 20 out of 30 total nights. • Mean: 4 nights/week • Min: 2 nights/week • Max: 5 nights/week • Slept total of 209 hours • Mean: 34.8 hours/week • Min: 28 hours/week • Max: 42 hours/week • Baseline Scores: • Stress: 30 • Anxiety: 16 • Procrastination: 80 • Post-Test Scores: • Stress: 7 • Anxiety: 3 • Procrastination: 56

13. Figures • A paired-samples t test would be the most appropriate method to compare baseline scores of each measure to their respective post-test scores. • IV: Hours slept • DV: Baseline & post-test scores for each measure • Will most likely see lower means in post-test scores.

14. What do these results show? • There is a possibility that my hypothesis is correct. • Post-test scores of each measure turned out to be much lower than the baseline scores. • Therefore, getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night for 5 nights per week had a possible significant effect on stress, anxiety, and procrastination levels. • If follow-up research supports this finding, this means that amount of sleep each night significantly affects levels of stress, anxiety, and procrastination in human beings.

15. Limitations • Only one participant in the study. • Cannot perform statistical tests on data • Sample data cannot accurately represent an entire population • Possible experimenter’s bias • Participant, who was also the experimenter, had full knowledge of the current study, which brings up the possibility of biased responses to measures • Outside factors affecting ability to successfully complete BA plan every night

16. Suggestions for Future Research • To avoid limitations of the current study, future research should: • Recruit a much larger sample representative of a specific population (preferably adolescents or college students) • Withhold information from the participants that may cause biased responses. • Other questions to explore: • How many total nights can the behavioral activation plan be skipped and still have a significant overall effect on stress, anxiety, and procrastination levels? • Since stress and anxiety are often related to depression, and a common symptom of depression is sleep disorders, will this study have a similar effect with depression as one of the dependent variables?