Counting Sheep and Counting the Consequences of Sleep Loss: Personal Reflection on How Losing Sleep Harms Your Competence

Based on clinical measures of disordered sleep and popular accounts of sleep by clinical experts, we created a reliable and valid Loss of Sleep Scale (LOSS) to describe everyday degrees of sleep deprivation students regularly experience. Factor analysis of 556 college students rating 50 statements about their sleep on a 7-point Likert scale revealed three subscales: an 8-item lack-of-adequate-sleep subscale (α=.825), a 5-item not-a-morning-person subscale (α=.706), and a 5-item drowsiness-while-awake subscale (α=.632). A composite score correlated with each subscale and especially the first factor (α=.838). The lack-of-adequate-sleep subscale was positively correlated with the total number of trips, bumps, drops, and spills over the last month, r=.184, N=547, p<.001. Similarly, the drowsiness-while-awake subscale correlated negatively to scores on a ‘quiz’ following short readings and a short delay, r=-.176, N=339, p<.001. We describe in detail an introductory psychology activity for understanding sleep loss embedding our measure within an online classroom-like learning experience. The Loss of Sleep Scale and the accompanying activity are freely available on the Copernican Revolution website (CopernicanRevolution.org), a project of the first author to spark self-reflection about psychology concepts by making them personally relevant. After completing any activity, persons receive a certificate of completion including their personalized results and a guide for interpretation. By combining our standard curriculum about sleep with personal reflection requiring little class-time, we can hopefully help students more deeply understand consciousness and grow personally from the experience.