Sleep quality as a mediating role in general health and academic performance in the context of sustainable education

Abstract

One of the most important factors influencing a student's life is their academic performance as it contributes to their success.  It is also known that poor sleep quality can consequently cause students to obtain poor academic grades. There are many different studies that assess the relationship between general health and educational performance. However, this study emphasizes the mediation effect of sleep quality on the relationship between general health and academic performance which was not common in other studies conducted. The ICPSR’s National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents dataset was specifically DS 8 (home data) and DS 16(education data) which were merged and cleaned using SPSS. Pearson’s correlation and mediation analysis are performed to test the relationship between sleep quality, general health  and academic performance using SPSS Macro Process 4.0. The results of this study revealed that mental health was negatively correlated with academic performance. Physical health was also found to have a positive relationship with academic performance. The results of the mediation analysis showed that sleep was not a mediating factor in the relationship between academic performance and physical or mental health.   This study plays an important role in providing a better understanding of the mediating role of sleep and also the direct and indirect effects of general health on academic performance. The insights provided can be useful to improve the educational achievements of students by ensuring that their general health is well-maintained and contribute to educational data analytics and education quality.