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A school-based sleep education program to improve sleep duration, latency, and efficiency of Spanish children

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Abstract

(1) To analyze the effectiveness of a school-based sleep education program on sleep duration, latency, and efficiency, as well as separated by weekdays and weekend days and by sex. (2) To analyze children's sleep patterns (duration, latency, and efficiency) on weekdays and weekend days and by sex. A total of 110 children (average age of 8.4 (0.3) years, 62% girls) (experimental group (60 children, girls 52%) and control group (50 children, girls 74%) from 5 schools in Granada (Spain) participated in the study. The sleep patterns were measured by accelerometers attached to the non-dominant wrist 7 days/24 h, and by sleep log. The program lasted 8 weeks with a total of eight activities (one activity per week). Regarding our first objective, sleep duration decreased significantly in both groups on weekdays (p = 0.004) and weekend days (p < 0.001), and this reduction in sleep duration was lower in the experimental group than control group. By sex, girls of the experimental group reported a lower reduction in sleep duration on weekdays (p = 0.037) and weekend days (p < 0.001) than boys and reported better sleep efficiency than boys (p = 0.050). Regarding the second objective, children slept 12.41 min more on weekend days than weekdays (p = 0.037). Our sleep program did not increase the sleep duration in children, but it did increase sleep efficiency for girls on weekend days. Long-term multicomponent programmes that involve families to a greater extent seem necessary to improve this health-related behavior.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to schools for allowing us to carry out this study.

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [DEP2015-63988-R].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PA-HELP “Physical Activity for Health Promotion” Research Group, Department of Physical Education and Sport, Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Granada, Carretera de Alfacar, 21, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Ávila-García & Pablo Tercedor

  2. PA-HELP “Physical Activity for Health Promotion” Research Group, Department of Musical, Plastic and Body Expression Didactics, “La Inmaculada” Teacher Training Centre, University of Granada, Calle Joaquina Eguaras, 114, 18013, Granada, Spain

    Francisco Javier Huertas-Delgado

Authors
  1. Manuel Ávila-García
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  2. Francisco Javier Huertas-Delgado
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  3. Pablo Tercedor
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Contributions

Conceptualization, MÁ-G and FJH-D. Methodology, MÁ-G and PT. Software, MÁ-G. Formal analysis, MÁ-G and FJH-D. Investigation, MÁ-G, FJH-D and PT. Resources; MÁ-G. Data Curation, MÁ-G and FJH-D. Writing-original draft preparation, MÁ-G. Writing-review and editing, FJH-D, PT. Project administration, MÁ-G, PT. Funding acquisition, PT.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Ávila-García.

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The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical committee permission

The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee on Human Research of the University of Granada (Reference: 57/CEIH/2015).

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Ávila-García, M., Huertas-Delgado, F.J. & Tercedor, P. A school-based sleep education program to improve sleep duration, latency, and efficiency of Spanish children. Sleep Biol. Rhythms 19, 343–351 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-021-00323-y

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