Authors

Noel Parks

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among loneliness, sleep quality, and academic performance in university students to determine if sleep quality and academic performance are predictors of high levels of loneliness, which is an indicator of depression. A total of 106 students were surveyed, 10 graduate and 96 undergraduate. The UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 was used to determine perceived loneliness by having participants respond to 14 statements. An example statement was “I am part of a group of friends.” If participants answered “Always” their score for this response would be one, while a response of “Never” would be a score of four. Higher scores were correlated with higher levels of loneliness. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index measured sleep quality by measuring seven components of sleep such as subjective sleep quality, sleep duration, and sleep disturbance. An example question was “In the past month, how would you rate your overall sleep quality?” A response of “Very good” would be a score of zero while a response of “Very bad” would be a score of three. Higher scores were correlated with poorer sleep qualities. Academic performance was based on selfreported grade point average (GPA). No significant correlations were found between loneliness and GPA or loneliness and sleep quality. Thus GPA and sleep quality were not indicators for loneliness (and therefore depression). Consequently, rather than depending on external indicators like GPA and sleep quality, all university students should be screened for high levels of loneliness so that action can be taken to either prevent depression or treat existing depression.

Publication Date

12-1-2015

Language

English

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.