The Mayfield Crier staff asked Mayfield students & Faculty about their sleep patterns through a school-wide survey, and the results are in: Mayfield Senior School students and staff are tired. Here are the key findings of the survey.
The survey consisted of ten sleep-related questions all covering different aspects of what affects the sleep a participant gets. A total of 239 individual responses were received, 206 of which were students and 33 were staff members of the Mayfield community.
Of the student body surveyed, 59 freshman, 43 sophomores, 55 juniors, and 49 seniors responded, providing an even representation of each grade level.
Of the student body surveyed, 59 freshman, 43 sophomores, 55 juniors, and 49 seniors responded, providing an even representation of each grade level.
During the school week, 35.4% of Mayfield students are sleeping for six hours per night, followed closely behind the 31.1% of students who are getting seven hours of sleep per night. Based on this data, the average amount of sleep a Mayfield student gets during the school week is six hours and 24 minutes.
Per the CDC, an individual from the age of 13-18 should be getting 8-10 hours each night. The data collected implies that, based on this sample, only about 15% of the whole Mayfield student body is sleeping the recommended 8-9 hours per night, as no one responded with any more than hours per night on average, 85% getting seven hours or less.
Similarly, faculty and staff are not getting enough sleep per night during the school week. The CDC recommends adults from the age of 18-60 years get seven hours or more per night. On average, Mayfield faculty members are sleeping six hours and 54 minutes per night- meaning there is a significant percentage getting less than seven hours per night, despite 48.5% of respondents getting seven hours per night.
Obviously, schedules are tight during the school week, but what about the weekend?
Mayfield students definitely have the opportunity to sleep more on weekends (and breaks, too!). 34% of respondents said they get 10 hours per night on weekends, the average amount of sleep per night on weekends being nine hours and 35 minutes per night, over three hours more than the average during the week for students.
A similar difference is reflected in the sleep patterns of staff as well, 51.1% of respondents saying they get an average of 8 hours per night on weekends and breaks, with the totaled average of about 8 hours and 17 minutes per night.
We didn’t forget about naps, though! The survey suggests that 76% of the student body takes naps on the occasion, being an average of an hour and 47 minutes per nap. About 70% of faculty takes an average 51 minute nap on occasion, suggesting the general consensus of the Mayfield community is that there is sometimes a short, resting period for people.
But with the lack of sleep at Mayfield, it poses a question of why people don’t get enough sleep. The most outstanding reason among students? Homework. 96.1%, or 198 of the 206 respondents attributed their sleep deprivation to homework, evidently being a big contributor. One person specified in the “other” category that studying for tests is a contributor to them not getting enough sleep, too. The other most outstanding reasons being extracurricular activities among 71% of students, some people explicitly referenced sports, in addition to technology/social media use as a reason by 48.1%. It seems the combustion of the modern-day high school experience with elements of homework, extracurriculars, stress presumably caused by that, and social media/use of technology has put sleep on the back-burner of priorities. For some 22.3% of respondents it’s family life, for 34.5% it is not being able to fall asleep, and for 33.5% of respondents it’s simply doing other things.
While college applications were not available as a specific category, about five responses specified those as a contributor to their lack of sleep, suggesting that there are many more students in the college application process dealing with the same issue. One person also pointed out that Mayfield’s early start to the school day (8:00am) shaves off hours of rest due to their commute time.
Faculty, on the other hand, primarily attributes their lack of sleep to stress, 48.5% say so. The runner up is family life at 42.4%, while 36.4% said their inability to fall asleep is a contributor. Teachers have homework, too, 18.2% specified this as a contributor and a few respondents specified that grading and lesson plans are keeping them from going to sleep more.
One thing to take into consideration is that both student and faculty respondents have some level of imbalance, spending a lot of time working or staying mentally occupied by stress and not a lot of time resting, impacting their sleep.
The survey also took a look at people’s nighttime routines, for 56.3% of respondents, it’s looking at their phone scrolling through Tik Tok or texting people. 37.4% of respondents watch a show, 33% listen to music, 15.5% spend time with family, though 51.5% say they go straight to bed.
In the “other category” multiple people specified they do skincare or shower, some individuals pray before falling asleep, and one person said they are doing homework right before they fall asleep, which raises the bigger question of when has homework reached the point of being too much if students are doing it up until they fall asleep. A more diverse range of pre-entered options could have been available may have drawn more people to say they do homework, self-care, or prayer before bedtime. With that, it seems that most people are on their phones as they fall asleep, indicating technology is a contributing factor to a loss of sleep as seen as a general factor earlier.
For faculty, the same consensus of using technology/social media before they fall asleep as the most common activity is reflected as well, with 45.5% admitting to this. Interestingly enough, the second most common nighttime habit is watching a show, which was not as significantly shown through the student numbers. 27.3% of faculty admitted to reading, while only 18.2% said they go straight to bed, which is significantly less than the student numbers of going straight to sleep.
Similar to the homework-until-sleep outlier in the student survey, one staff member claimed they do work-related prep right before bed, which shows that the work/life balance of both teachers and students may not be existent among at least some of the population.
There also was a show of how these poor sleep patterns inevitably do impact people’s waking hours. In response to how often people find themselves tired at school there was a rather unsurprising response in relation to people’s sleep patterns. 38.9% of students said they often find themselves tired, while 34%, to some degree of exaggeration, find themselves always tired at school. Only 13% of respondents said that they only find themselves tired at school, which is a similar percentage to the 15% of students who reported that they are getting sleep within the 8-10 recommended range of hours. 6.3% admitted that they are so tired they fall asleep during class, speaking for itself.
Faculty experiences a similar reality with fatigue at school, 30.3% of respondents saying they are often tired at school, the most common response was 36.4% of staff are only sometimes tired at school. This may reflect their closer average to the recommended 7 hours of sleep, though this still suggests that teachers are not getting enough sleep.
Data suggests that, for the majority, people’s lack of sleep does not affect them so severely that they are not arriving at school, though it does enough to, on the off chance, be absent or late from school because of their lack of sleep.
When asked how many times a student has been late/absent per year (an estimate), 47.1% claimed that they have never had that happen, but that leaves 52.9% of people with that occurrence. On average, students are only late/absent from school because of their lack of sleep about 1 time per year, though some people do miss more as the survey found.
Teachers have a significantly better handle on this, with 72.7% of respondents saying they have never been late or missed due to a lack of sleep. Aside from this, that still leaves 27.3% of faculty being late/absent from work because of their lack of sleep.
The lack of sleep does have reported effects on staff and students alike. But there is one piece of evidence that shows the school structure and schedule must be reassessed, because people are tired. 
198 out of the 206 Mayfield students who responded said they wish they got more sleep per night. 29 members of the faculty who responded said they wish they got more sleep per night too. This may be a signal that the high-school student and faculty structure needs to be reassessed, because more sleep may very well improve the lives of students and faculty- both in their quality of work, but more importantly, in the quality of their life.
