Are sleep education programs successful? The case for improved and consistent research efforts

University of South Australia, Centre for Sleep Research, PO Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5000, AustraliaReceived 3 June 2011. Revised 2 August 2011. Accepted 2 August 2011. Available online 20 November 2011.View full text Sleep duration and quality are associated with a range of neuropsychological and psychosocial outcomes in children and adolescents but community awareness of this is low. A small body of literature on sleep education programs in children and adolescents delivered through school-based programs is attempting to address this. A review of the literature found only 8 studies and 4 pilot studies in abstract form. This paper presents these sleep education programs and evaluates their effectiveness. In general, findings suggest that when sleep knowledge was measured it was increased in most programs. However this did not necessarily equate to sleep behaviour change such as increased sleep duration or improved sleep hygiene. Reasons for this are discussed and may include motivation and readiness to change, salience to the individual, delivery, content, time allocation, or methodological underpinnings. This paper attempts to understand this and assess how best to improve future sleep education programs from a theoretical perspective. Specifically, it considers the theory of planned behaviour which may assist in ensuring maximum efficacy for the current and future development of sleep education programs.

prs.rt("abs_end");Sleep education; Motivation; Sleep duration; Sleep hygiene; Paediatric sleep; Adolescent sleep

Figures and tables from this article:

Fig. 1. Representation of an integrated model of behaviour change (Adapted from Ajzen50).

View Within ArticleTable 1. Downs and Black (1998)28 criteria used in the methodological quality evaluation of the reviewed studies.

All items scored 0 or 1, except “description of principal confounders”, which scored 0, 1, or 2.

View Within ArticleTable 2. General characteristics of school sleep education programs.

* ACES = Australian centre for education in sleep, RCT = randomised controlled trial, STEPS = sleep treatment and education program for students.

View Within ArticleTable 3. Summary of measures, design and results.

ACES = Australian centre for education in sleep, DST = delayed sleep timing, PSQI = Pittsburgh sleep quality index, RCT = randomised controlled trial, STEPS = sleep treatment and education program for students.

View Within ArticleTable 4. Quality of studies (not including abstracts).

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