Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-9-2026
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Sharday Ewell
Second Advisor
Abby Boyd
Third Advisor
Jessica Osborne
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Students in introductory biology courses routinely sacrifice sleep during exam weeks, yet the relationship between sleep habits, study behaviors, and the academic pressures that shape these decisions remains poorly understood within biology education research. This mixed methods study examined how sleep habits relate to study strategy use and explored how students’ reason about their sleep-study tradeoff decisions under academic and societal pressure. We surveyed students enrolled in a large enrollment introductory biology course and found that students slept significantly less during exam weeks than non-exam weeks, yet reduced sleep was not associated with increased study strategy use. Qualitative analysis revealed that students engage in cost benefit reasoning about sleep and cognitive readiness, and that a majority perceived GPA concern, social comparison, and the normalization of sleep sacrifice as drivers of their decisions. We position sleep deprivation as an underexamined factor, one that depletes the cognitive resources deep learning requires and may push students toward surface approaches regardless of their intentions. We make several recommendations for how instructors can restructure assessments, provide explicit study timelines, and address sleep sacrifice norms directly in the classroom to reduce the academic pressure driving these patterns.
Recommended Citation
McCay, Patrick C. and Ewell, Sharday, "Investigating the Relationship Between Sleep Habits and Study Behaviors in Introductory Undergraduate Biology" (2026). Honors Theses. 3433.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/3433
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