To study or to sleep?

The amount of time spent studying may not matter if the student has not had enough sleep, according to research published in Child Development. This longitudinal study examined the effect that varying amounts of study and sleep had on teenagers' studies the following day. The results suggest that regardless of how much a student generally studies each day, if they sacrifice sleep time to study more than usual they will be more likely to struggle in class, or on an assignment or test, the following day. This problem becomes increasingly prevalent over time, the study proposes, because students are more likely to sacrifice sleep time for study time in the latter years of high school.

A further study in this area, reported in Better: Evidence-based Education, adds to the evidence that the amount of sleep a teenager gets (too much or too little) affects academic performance. It finds that teenagers who sleep seven hours a night tend to have the highest test scores, while teenagers who sleep for less than six or more than 11 hours tend to perform poorly on tests.