Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Nov 8, 2022
Date Accepted: Jul 11, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A qualitative investigation into university student preferences for a psychological intervention designed to improve sleep
ABSTRACT
Background:
Many university students have difficulties with sleep, therefore effective psychological treatments are needed. Most research on psychological treatments to improve sleep has been conducted with middle aged and older adults, which means it is unclear whether existing psychological treatments are helpful for young adult university students.
Objective:
This study aimed to discover university student preferences for a psychological intervention to improve sleep quality.
Methods:
Focus groups were conducted over three stages to examine student views regarding content, format and session duration for a psychological intervention to improve sleep. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze participant responses.
Results:
30 participants [1] attended small focus group discussions. Three key themes were identified: 1) program development; 2) help-seeking and 3) student sleep characteristics. Program development subthemes were: program format; program content; and engagement facilitators. Help-seeking subthemes were: when to seek help; where to access help; stigma; and barriers. Student sleep characteristics subthemes were: factors disturbing sleep and consequences of poor sleep.
Conclusions:
Students emphasized the need for a sleep intervention with an in person and social component, individualized content and ways to monitor their progress. Participants did not think there was stigma associated with seeking help for sleep problems. Students identified the lack of routine in their lifestyle, academic workload and the pressure of multiple demands as key contributors to sleep difficulties.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.