Increasing Sleep Duration in Collegiate Athletes: A Behavioral Intervention Involving Sleep Education, Self-Tracking, Goal Setting, and Self-Reinforcement

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a behavioral intervention on sleep duration in a group of Division I student athletes from a women\u27s rowing team. This participant pool was specifically selected because they have early morning practice due to several scheduling constraints, which can make adequate sleep duration more difficult to obtain. Further, the participants in this pool were selected because they had the lowest previous nights sleep and perceived average sleep duration, and therefore in most need of this type of intervention. A multiple baseline design was used to determine if a functional relationship between the intervention and sleep duration behavior exists. Five participants were given an actigraph to wear that tracked their sleep duration during baseline, and during intervention were given access to the phone application that syncs with the actigraph to display sleep duration. Sleep duration data collected by the actigraph was then evaluated using visual analysis. Although all participants\u27 mean levels of sleep increased during intervention, high levels of variability and overlapping data for two participants prevent conclusions about the effectiveness of teaching self-management skills on sleep duration behavior. The present data indicate the potential promise of this type of intervention, but the data do not support a functional relation between the intervention and behavior. However, since this type of intervention is very feasible to conduct within athletic departments, research should be conducted to determine whether self-management could be applied to improve sleep duration in student athletes. Keywords: sleep duration, behavioral intervention, student athletes, self-managemen