Abstract:

Sleep is able to influence directly the subjective feeling of mental and physical well-being of everyday life. Previous research has indicated that the shortening of the duration and quality of sleep in University students may have significant implications on a physical and mental performance of the individual. Furthermore, it may have an undesirable impact on the overall academic performance of students and in the long term, even on the onset of mental health problems. The aim of this pilot study is to determine the quality and subjectively acceptable duration of sleep of Czech university students, specifically pre-service teachers and to uncover negative trends in the area of sleep. Mainly it is about inappropriate habits or substances leading to delay or induce of sleep. To obtain the data a standardised questionnaire was used, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), supplemented with questions focused on habits and substance that students used to influence the sleep. The results were statistically processed. The sample of this study consisted of 230 Czech University students from the Faculty of Education, specifically pre-service teachers. At the 60,87% of the students was found poor quality sleep, although 66,29% of the students subjectively assessed the duration of their sleep at an affordable and consistent with their ideal duration of sleep (7-9 hours). Sleep duration significantly affects the subjective evaluation of the quality of sleep of the students. The most frequent means to delay the evening sleep is coffee, physical activity, and naps during the day. Among drinking coffee and problem to fall asleep was not detected a statistically significant association. Illegal stimulants are used only by 0.43% of the students, as well as legal stimulants on prescription. Poor-quality sleep may compromise health and quality of life, in addition to future teaching performance of pre-service teachers. Therefore we should detect sleeping problems of adolescents and educate them adequately with the severity of the issue during the teacher preparedness.

Keywords:

Quality of sleep, students, substances.