The 8–Hour Challenge: Incentivizing Sleep during End–of–Term Assessments

Sleep is critical to physical health, mental well–being, attention, and creativity. During the week of final exams, however, fewer than 10% of undergraduate students maintain the recommended average of 8 hours/night (or even the recommended minimum of 7 hours/night). For students completing multifaceted projects in studio–based majors (e.g., interior design, architecture, graphic design, studio art), anecdotal and questionnaire data suggest that the end–of–semester reduction in sleep duration may be even worse. One potential solution is to offer students an incentive to maintain healthy sleep durations. We offered interior design students, who were enrolled in a freshman–level graphics studio course, an optional extra credit incentive to maintain optimal sleep durations for five nights leading up to the due date of their final project. If participants maintained an average sleep duration of ≥8.0 hours for five nights, they would earn extra credit. By contrast, if they slept an average of 7.0–7.9 hours, there would be no grade change, and if they slept an average of ≤6.9 hours, they were instructed that they would lose points (no points were actually deducted). Of the 27 students enrolled in the course, 22 students attempted the challenge (81.5%), and we monitored their sleep duration objectively using wristband actigraphy devices. We compared their sleep duration to that of a group of 22 nonincentivized students enrolled in the same program. In the nonincentivized comparison group, very few students averaged 8 hours (9%) or even 7 hours (14%) of sleep per night. In dramatic contrast, the 8–hour challenge increased the percentage of 8– and 7–hour sleepers to 59% and 86%, respectively. Participants who took the 8–hour challenge slept an average of 98 minutes more each night than nonincentivized students and 82 minutes more than they self–reported to sleeping during the semester. The substantial increase in nightly sleep duration did not come at a cost to project performance. Individuals who opted in to the sleep challenge performed as well on the final project as students who did not opt in, and students who showed more consistent sleep (i.e., fewer nights of poor sleep followed by rebound sleep) performed better than students who showed inconsistent sleep. Thus, even during highly stressful “deadline” weeks, students can maintain healthy sleeping patterns without exacting a cost on their project performance.