RESEARCH PAPER DR. DIROSA CONSUMER HEALTH DECISIONS Kyle Barile, Victoria Camera, Frank Camera, Nick Yansick

Research Question Among athletic college adolescents ages 18-25, does the amount of sleep one acquires determine stamina and physical fitness during activity?

Significance of the problem  The importance of answering our research question is to give the group and athletic college adolescents a better understanding. An understanding of how a loss of sleep can detriment one’s ability to perform more efficiently when engaging in physical activity. The group believes a good amount of sleep can benefit heart health, stress levels reduces. It has also been known to improve memory loss and reduce minor inflammation.

What we want to know?  We were hoping to answer these questions..  Is athletic performance affected by sleep?  If so, how it is affected?  Does the amount of sleep affect different people?

Who were the participants?  College Adolescents  Ages  Athletes  82 Males and 18 Females

Athletes Involved in Survey

Results  The results from the surveys given by the group had given them usable and sufficient information to draw conclusions. The group can conclude that more males than females answered these surveys. Many of the participants began participation at ages 5,6, or 7. Drinking and homework seemed to be the two top activities that take away from a good night of sleep. It was also very obvious that many of the results had shown that sleep was an important part of their day. There was hardly any negative feedback on the question of the level of importance.

Survey Results

Pie Chart Discussion  The Recommended range of hours of sleep is approximately  Only about 32% of the survey participants were in that range.  68% of participants got less sleep than recommended.  This shows that a large majority of college aged athletes do not get the sleep they need.

Why don’t they get the sleep they need?

Bar Chart Discussion  The bar chart shows that when it comes to jobs and having a significant other, a majority of participants say that those factors do not affect their sleep loss.  On the other hand homework and drinking do seem to be the main factors that affect sleep loss.  Both of those factors are ones that college students are most likely to face more than other demographics.

Importance of a Good Nights Sleep

Chart Discussion  Among our participants 68% strongly agree that a good nights sleep is important.  24% said they agree with that statement.  This means the overwhelming majority of the 100 survey participants believe that is important to get a good nights sleep.

Discussion  The answer to our research question is that according to athletes, regardless of what sport they play, sleep is very important to their athletic performance.  The actual affect is hard to determine from the survey but it can be assumed from the other data that it has a negative effect.  The results from our scientific literature seemed to lean towards lack of sleep negatively affecting athletic performance for the most part.  Although a few studies did not find a correlation between sleep and athletic performance.  No studies found that a lack of sleep improves athletic performance.

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