Sleep habits and their relation to self-reported attention and class climate in preteens

Sleep is fundamental in daily functioning, especially in teenagers who are in a critical period of their development. Accordingly, a deteriorated sleep, that is increasingly common in this age group, has been related to poorer school performance. The goal of this cross-sectional study was to collect up-to-date sleep data in preteens, and to examine their relation with two important dimensions for school achievement, which are self-reported attention and class climate at school.

Data were collected at school in 1151 preteens (597 boys; 554 girls; 11.31 ± 0.62 years old) between June 2021 and March 2022. Self-completion questionnaires evaluated attention and class climate. Sleep questionnaires assessed sleep habits for weekdays and weekends, separately.

Preteens reported sleeping 8 h and 39 min during weekdays and 9 h and 32 min during weekends. All sleep measures showed a significant change between weekdays and weekends, leading to a longer and better sleep on weekends, likely to compensate for insufficient sleep during the week. In addition, girls woke-up later and spent more time in bed than boys during weekends. Importantly, during weekdays, correlational analysis showed a relationship between sleep measures and both self-reported attention and class climate scores, suggesting that longer and better sleep was related to better attention and perceived class climate at school.

This study depicted up-to-date sleep habits in preteens, depending on the day of the week and the gender, and highlighted their relation to two potential contributors of academic success, namely attention and class climate.