Sleeo Deprivation

Around one-third of overseas students still drink coffee after 7 P.M, and over half of them usually eat dinner very late, even though the majority of them have already suffered from sleeping problem, found by a recent survey.

Sleep deprivation, which means the condition of lack of sleep, is quite common in modern society. It was found in previous research that insufficient sleep could lead to serious harm to health.

With the purpose of finding out the causes and the effects concerning to the lack of sleepiness among overseas students in Australia, 36 overseas students studying in ACL were surveyed on 24th Apr, 2008.

The survey was carried out by means of a questionnaire, which consisted of three main parts. First one was the basic demographic information and sleeping habit of respondents. After that, participants were asked if they ever had had sleeping problem and some possible causes. Finally, several consequences of sleep deprivation were provided to check whether the participants had the same experiences and how they tacked sleeping problem. In addition, the data was collected and compared with previous research.

As the result shown, although the bulk of overseas students (75%) believed that 8 hours a day was the perfect hour to sleep, five out of six of them slept between 6 to 7 hours per night. In fact, three quarters of participants admitted that they suffered from sleeping problem. While similar number of participants said they could not sleep because of homesickness, compared to those who worried about money (approximately 33%), almost twice as many people claimed they had too much homework. In regard to some specific consequences, most of people who had insufficient sleep underwent some kind of discomfort such as headache, depression and poor appetite. Moreover, over three quarters of them stated that they could not focus on their work or think clearly.

The purpose of this research was set to find out if there was