Exploring Sleep Quality in Bangladeshi University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

BackgroundUniversity students frequently experience challenges that affect their sleep quality, including academic stress, lifestyle habits, and socio-demographic factors. Common sleep disturbances, such as delayed sleep onset and poor sleep efficiency, often result in daytime dysfunction and difficulty maintaining enthusiasm. MethodsThis cross-sectional study appraised sleep quality among undergraduate students in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 530 undergraduate students were purposively selected from three public universities. Participants were chosen through convenience sampling, with students who had contracted COVID-19 during the study excluded from the sample. ResultsThe mean age of the university students was 21.1 ({+/-}2.0) years. Regarding PSQI components, the participants showed moderate sleep latency (55.7%) and habitual sleep efficiency (56.0%), with mild levels of sleep disturbances at night (68.1%), daytime dysfunction (51.1%), and difficulty maintaining enthusiasm (48.5%). The global PSQI scores were poor for 59.4% of participants, while 40.6% had good scores, with a mean of 6.5({+/-}2.9). Among the students, 44.9% reported fair subjective sleep quality, followed by good (24.7%), very good (18.1%), and poor (12.3%) sleep quality. Lifestyle factors such as class attendance, online media usage, BMI, physical exercise, tea/coffee consumption, and smoking were significantly associated with sleep quality (p<0.05). Sleep quality factors like daytime sleep duration, nighttime sleep latency, and sleeping pill usage were also significantly associated with sleep quality (p<0.05). Significant associations were found between sleep quality and factors such as age, household income, daily study hours, BMI, daytime sleep, and sleep latency (p<0.05). ConclusionThe study revealed that longer sleep latency, daytime sleep, and sleeping pill usage were related with poorer sleep quality. It also emphasized that sleep disturbances, daytime dysfunction, and difficulty maintaining enthusiasm were significant predictors of sleep quality.