Average Amount of Sleep for ASU Students

EDT 180D

Problem Solving using Digital Technology Applications

For Gary Lewallen

Spring 2018 Semester

Due: Spring April 25th, 2018

Group Ten:

Olivia Mangnall

Regan Tullis

&

Ashlie Flanagan
 For our groups research project, we chose to ask the question of “How many hours of sleep,

on average, do ASU students get on a regular school night.” The reason we chose this topic for our

guide is because we want to see the factors that go into how much sleep people are getting. For

example, some other questions we asked were; gender, age, year of study, and college to identify,

We also asked students to share about how much time they spend on their phones everyday, what

they normally do on their phones at night, and if they could rate their quality of sleep on a scale of

one to five what it would be to see if there is an impact on sleep connected to daily phone use.

Overall, we collected roughly 174 responses from ASU students alone on a Google Docs survey

guide, to hopefully prove our overall question. The results from the survey are shown and

explained below.

When it came to the question of gender, the results were actually not what we expected.

We assumed that there would be more guys than girls, but we were wrong! There was in fact,

76.5% females, 21.8% males, and roughly 2% prefered not to say that took our survey. This was

interesting as we originally thought there were more boys who attended this school but then we

thought about exactly who we asked. Many of the students in my classes for example are females,

so that would explain the abundance of women taking the survey.

As for the statistics on the different colleges the students are apart of, this is more varied.

ASU has seventeen options of schools to specialize in and the students that we surveyed showed

that diversity. Our largest section of surveyors were apart of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

at 44.1%, and we had a few ties for no one being apart of some schools for example the

Thunderbird School of Managements or University College. The second largest school we had for

surveyors is the Liberal Art and Sciences College at 23.5%. Otherwise, the rest of the schools were

pretty well dispersed around 4-5%.

 The year of study category had an interesting range. Due to the fact that the majority of

students who took the survey were freshman (75%) out of the total of 174 recorded participants.

The second closest group is Sophomores coming in at 21.2% and the rest of the groups differ in

smaller numbers. Only 10 people out of the 174 students were seniors and 4 students were graduate

students. However, even though there were no students in their post-bacc year, we still were able

to get responses from students of all grades.

When it comes to the ages that we got, they were closely related to the year of study in that

the largest age group we got to take the survey were 19 years old, or in other words, freshman. The

majority were freshman ranging from 17-19 and the rest of the data includes a scattered variety of

numbers above 19 but below 35. There were no students who were ages 29, 31, and 32. For the

ages 24, and 26-28, only had one participant.

Surprisingly, the results for average hours spent on your phone a day were very spread out.

Our range was anywhere from 1 to 23 hours and almost all of those numbers were picked. The

amount of time that most people said they spend on their phone was 4 hours a day followed closely

in second place with three hours. Two and five hours were the next average time students spent on

their phone a day. The least amount of recorded time was 9, 11, 18, and 23. No one stated they

spent 12-14, 16-17, and 19-22. We believe that the student who said they spent 23 hours on their

phone was not being honest and was trying to mess up our data. We do not think it is possible to

spend 23 hours on a phone a day as classes last longer than that.

For the results of what students do most often on their phones was pretty much what we

expected. The majority of the population said they spend the most time on social media which was

then followed closely by texting as assumed prior to creating the survey. This question did allow
for multiple responses from the people surveyed, so people could have chose more than one option.

I know for example, that many participants selected all of the options presented to them. By

reviewing the survey results and the data put into an Excel spreadsheet, we were able to come to

this conclusion. The activity that people seemed to do the least of on their phones was gaming and

watching movies/videos. We had expected the category with videos would be higher because

males tend to watch videos on youtube, and just about every social media account has videos on

their page (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat). However, work emails was also a frequently selected

answer as well.

The results for the average hours of sleep that ASU students get was also pretty varied, yet

also expected. The most common answer was seven hours of sleep on a school night. Six and eight

hours were both close as well. Surprisingly enough, many people also stated that they receive nine

hours! Studies have shown that the average amount of sleep needed for a 19 year old is 7-9 hours

per night. On a more sad note, some people did answer that they only receive about 1-5 hours of

sleep which is poor for their health. The people who said they got nine or more hours of sleep will

be worshiped!

The last question asked for a range of quality of sleep among the participants. The range

was from 1 being poor quality to 5 being excellent quality of sleep. The most common answer that

we got was a four at 40%. Another close answer was 3 at 30% which would be average. Some

people, however, did put that they felt they had a 1 and a 5 in quality making the range all over the

place. People who thought their sleep quality was a 1, could be because of what they do at night

when trying to sleep, what they eat before bed, and or their room temperature. All of these factors

may play a role in everyone who participated’ sleep schedule.

 In conclusion, as a group, we have decided that if were to redo this assignment, we change

the number of sleep hours to ensure we didn't have answers as crazy as we did. We would also add

a question that asks what they do before bed as this is a major factor in quality of sleep which was

one of our focus questions. We would also add more questions that didn’t solely focus on phone

usage and more of what is done when going to sleep. When looking back at our charts, we realized

and knew that prior to looking at the data, some answers would be expected (hours of sleep, things

done on phone), and some would leave shocked.