Limited effect of sleep education among rural middle-school students in eastern China: a 4-month intervention study

Sleep education had inconsistent effects on children and adolescents, and there was a lack of evaluation based on the context of Chinese students. We aimed to explore the outcomes of sleep education on middle-school students in eastern China. We enrolled 239 middle-school students, divided into intervention group with sleep education (125) and control group (114). The sleep education was conducted within 4 months. Interaction effect was determined by generalized linear mixed models to evaluate efficacy of intervention, measured with three indicators (sleep knowledge, attitude and quality). There were no significant intervention effects on sleep knowledge, attitude and quality. Interaction effects (coefficient) were 0.008 (95% CI: -0.125 to 0.141, P = 0.905), 0.0001 (95% CI: -0.052 to 0.052, P = 0.997) and 0.045 (95% CI: -0.146 to 0.236, P = 0.640) on sleep knowledge, attitude and quality, respectively. Besides, no significant difference was found in the changes of three indicators among individuals who exhibited the same change in both groups. Four-month sleep education was not helpful to improve sleep knowledge, attitude and quality of middle-school students in eastern rural China. It is necessary to try suitable and practical intervention methods.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41105-025-00570-3.