Sleep Beliefs And Circadian Typology Of Helping Professions Students

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate sleep beliefs in students of helping professions and to explore differences in sleep beliefs considering circadian typology. We have also investigated the relationship between sleep beliefs, self-assessment of awareness of healthy sleep recommendations and self-assessment of sleep quality. Moreover we have investigated the relationship of circadian typology with assessment of awareness of recommendations for healthy sleep and assessment of one's own sleep quality. This study was conducted online among 563 students from seven different study programmes of helping professions at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Sleep beliefs were examined with Sleep Beliefs Scale (Adan et al., 2006) and circadian typology with Composite Scale of Morningness (Smith et al., 1989). The average percentage of correct sleep beliefs in helping professions students was 61%. The results showed low positive correlation between correctness of sleep beliefs and one's own assessment of awareness of healthy sleep recommendations. Greater self assessed sleep quality was associated with greater tendency toward morningness. The differences in the accuracy of sleep beliefs between students of different circadian typology was not found, neither was the correlation between accuracy of sleep beliefs and assessment of one's own sleep quality, nor the correlation between circadian typology dimension and assessment of awareness of healthy sleep recommendations. The results of our study implicate that university students, even those with some formal education on sleep physiology and psychology, could benefit from sleep hygiene education programs, both personally and professionally.