3.7.6: Sleep and College Students

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Sleep deprivation is becoming a major public health challenge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than one third of Americans sleep less than the recommended amount (Liu 2016). Sleep deprivation has been linked to chronic health problems as well as decreases in cognitive skills, decision making, productivity, and physical performance (Gibson and Shrader 2018; Heissel and Norris 2018; Giuntella and Mazzonna 2019).

One study considered the role of economic incentives to promote healthy sleep habits. The study was conducted using observations on students from the University of Oxford and the University of Pittsburgh (Avery et al. 2025). Each student was given a wearable device that collected data on their sleep habits. The experiment was conducted first over an eight-week period at Oxford, and then over a fifteen-week period at the University of Pittsburgh. These time lengths were chosen because they corresponded to the term lengths for each school. For the first two weeks, baseline data was collected from the wearable devices for everyone in the study. This baseline data allowed the researchers to establish the usual behavior of the individuals before any incentives are introduced. With this baseline data researchers were able to determine if the incentives were associated with a change in the behavior of the individuals. Surveys and incentives started in the third week of the study, and the wearable devices were monitored until the end of the study period.

Individuals in the treatment group of the study received financial incentives for meeting their sleep targets. Each night they achieved their targets they were rewarded by a nominal amount ($3.75 in U.S. dollars or £2.5 Great Britian pounds). Similarly, each night that the participant failed to meet their targets, they were penalized by the same amount. The study also provided incentives for continued participation. Individuals in the control group did not receive any financial incentives.

A total of 508 individuals provided useful data for the study. The researchers reported that some of the data provided by the participants were not usable either because they found the wearable device uncomfortable or they dropped out of the study for other reasons. Importantly, the researchers investigated whether the group of individuals who did not provide usable data for the study were different in some key demographic way from those who did provide useful data. The researchers found no differences that they felt would introduce bias in the overall results of the study.

Some parts of this study did not have a control group, and some of the analysis pooled all the data regardless of whether there was a control group. For the discussion here, only the results based on comparing the control group to the treatment group will be used. For these data, it was found that subjects receiving incentives were more likely to sleep the recommended number of hours. Using statistical techniques, the researchers were able to show that these results hold even when accounting for differences between individuals.

An interesting question that the researchers considered was whether the incentives produced an effect only while they were in effect, or if the incentives produced a lasting effect. The researchers followed the subjects for a few weeks after the incentives stopped, and the data from this part of the study showed that the effects on sleep persisted to some extent in the weeks following the termination of treatment.

This study was based on a designed experiment, but it is somewhat more complicated than some of the other experiments we have encountered in that there is a time element, and the wider application of the study did not have a control group. As the authors of the study pointed out, the time element was crucially important because an effect may last for a short time. If the effect is short-term, then the conclusion is that the economic incentives did not provide lasting change and the effect may disappear as soon as, or slightly after, the incentives stop. Another possible conclusion was that when the subjects experience this lifestyle change, it leaves a positive lasting effect on their habits. Unfortunately, without a follow-up study of these same subjects, it is impossible to know if these individuals adopted better sleep habits on any long-term scale. Note that the subjects obviously knew they were taking part in a sleep study and may have kept good sleeping habits as long as the data were being collected, knowing that someone would be watching their progress even after the economic incentives ended. Many of these individuals may have kept up healthier sleep habits in an unconscious effort to please the researchers.

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