Jae Hee Kim

Biology 9 T2R4F5
Science-Math Project Paper

Research Question: How does stress in different activities affect the hours of sleep
one gets?

Hypothesis:
If students who attend Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt have a high level (6-10) of
stress in courses, activities, and sports then their hours of sleep will be less than that of
a student who is less stressed (1-5).

Justification of Hypothesis:
Stress can affect ones life either positively or negatively, but stress from courses,
activities and sports are usually distress, as if you ask a student if they feel stressed
from their courses, and ask their symptoms, they will usually say that they feel
depressed, tired and experience digestion problems, etc., which all happen to be
symptoms of distress. It is a well known fact that distress often results in insomnia,
which is a publicly well-known sleeping disorder that does not allow one to sleep.
Also, based on experience and educated guesses, stress from courses or activities
usually occurs because the student has too much work from them. Too much work
usually means staying up late to finish everything, which leads to less hours of sleep.
This is why if students who attend FDR have a high level of stress, their hours of sleep
will be less than that of a student who is less stressed.

General Background Knowledge:

Stress is a word we use to describe people when one is in a mental or emotional state
of strain or tension occurring from adverse or extremely demanding situations. There
are two types of stress: distress and eustress.

Stress affects the human body positively. Eustress, or positive stress (eu is the Greek
prefix for good), is able to increase self esteem, keep the body in alert, and avoid
danger (webmd.boots.com).

Distress is the opposite of eustress: its also known as negative stress. Several
well-known physical symptoms one can observe in distressed people include low
energy; constant headaches and stomachaches resulting in nausea, diarrhea,
constipation; chest pain and a rapid heartbeat; insomnia, etc. Other emotional
 symptoms include in one being easily moody, avoiding human contact, low self esteem,
depression, etc (webmd.boots.com).

Stress, overall, can affect the human body in pretty much every aspect, whether it be
emotions, physical health, behaviour or thinking ability.

Stress is one of the many factors that are able to affect sleeping habits. Other external
reasons as to why ones sleeping habits might change include light exposure, pain,
anxiety, sickness, medications, temperature, jet lag and age (Healthy Sleep).

Insomnia occurs when the said factors affect ones sleeping habits negatively. Insomnia
occurs when one experiences difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. People who
have insomnia tend to feel that they are sleep deprived, and do not feel satisfied with
their sleep. They also often wake up too early in the morning, rely on alcohol or sleeping
pills to fall asleep and have trouble falling back asleep. Insomnia may lead to fatigue,
low energy, low concentration levels, mood swings and bad performance in school or
work (Sleep Foundation).

Insomnia is usually classified based on its duration; acute insomnia, also known as
short-term insomnia, happens during a brief period of time and is the most common
insomnia which usually happens a lot around us . One may experience acute insomnia
because of life circumstances; for example, when one cannot fall asleep the day before
the exams or after receiving bad or stressful news (Sleep Foundation).

Chronic insomnia occurs when one experiences insomnia constantly for at least three
times a week for three months or more. Though there are other types of insomnia, such
as comorbid insomnia, onset insomnia and maintenance insomnia, the most common
types are the former two (Sleep Foundation).

Variables:

Experimental Named Variables Units Equipment or procedure

Variables for measurement/control

Independent Stress Amount of stress Data from survey

from courses,
 activities, sports.

Dependent Sleep Hours of sleep each Data from survey

night

Controlled Survey questions Computer, google docs.

Audience Freshmen at FDR

Number of Students At least over 30 students (46

in this case)

Materials:
Google docs: Used to create the survey and gather results.
Survey questions: Used to gather information needed from ninth grade
students.
Zimbra/Facebook: Used to send out the survey to ninth graders.
Background information regarding topic (stress, sleep): Used to help
creating survey questions.
Calculator: Used to find standard deviation, etc.
Microsoft Excel: Used to analyze data collected from survey and create graphs.

Survey Questions:
Method:

1. Together with a partner, 10 survey questions were made through google docs.
2. The survey was sent out through Zimbra to the freshmen and posted in the 9th
grade Facebook group.
3. 46 freshmen were revealed to have taken the survey after a week of sending out
the survey. The data was organized into the google spreadsheet.
4. The data was all entered into Microsoft Excel and made into visual graphs; the
mean, median, mode, Q1, Q3, standard deviation and range were found (these
are included below).
5. 9 graphs were created to represent our data.
6. The graphs were analyzed to see if there was any relationship between the
stress levels and hours of sleep.

Type of questions used and why:

1. How many hours of sleep do you get during the weekdays?

a. This question was used because we needed to know the hours of sleep
freshmen students got in order to support our hypothesis and get the right
test results, because the research question was, after all, the correlation
between stress levels and sleep.
2. How much do courses stress you?
a. Stress in courses was specifically targeted in order to get more exact
data than just stress overall.
3. How many activities are you involved in?
a. This question was used for the following questions.
4. How dedicated are you to your activities?
a. This question was used because we wanted to evaluate the correlation
between the activities and stress levels of a student regarding clubs and
after school recreations (excluding physical activities such as sports) as
students who show more interest, have higher levels of stress hence
sleeping less.
 5. How much do your activities stress you?
a. We included this question for the same reason as question 2; we needed
specific stress levels in specific areas instead of just stress overall.
6. Are you involved in any sports?
a. This is for the follow-up question, which has to do with stress levels
correlated with sports.
7. If yes, then how much do your sports stress you?
a. This question was included for the same reason as question 2 and
question 5; we needed specific stress levels in specific areas, like sports.
8. How many days a week do you exercise?
a. This question was used be we wanted to evaluate the correlation between
sports and stress levels of a student regarding sports as students who
exercise more have higher levels of stress, hence sleeping less.
9. How many minutes per day?
a. This question was used for the same reason as question 8; students who
exercise more have higher levels of stress.
10. Do you feel relaxed when you exercise?
a. This question was used to determine if sports really stress people out.

Type of survey method used and why:

My partner and I used google docs to create a survey to send out to the ninth graders.
We decided that google docs was an easy, fast way to create the survey and also a
well-known survey website to our audience, therefore making it easier for them to
respond as well. Using google docs also helped us organize our data better, as all the
results were immediately moved into google spreadsheet as a table. To sum it up,
google docs appealed most to our audience and saved us a lot of time.

Results:

1. How many hours of sleep do you get a day?

Hours of Sleep Number of Students

Under 4 0

4 2
 5 6

6 15

7 13

8 7

9 3

10 0

11 0

Over 11 0

Mean: 6.57
Standard Deviation: 1.21
Graph 1: The graph above shows the hours of sleep that ninth grade students get every
night. One can interpret that the mode of the data is 6 hours of sleep; the bar in the 6
hours area is the tallest. The number of students seem to be crowded around the 5~8
hours area, especially in the 6~7 hours area.

2. How much do your courses stress you?

Stress levels of students Amount of Stress

1 14

2 5

3 5

4 4

5 6

6 5

7 3

8 4

9 0

10 0

Mean: 3.6
Standard Deviation: 2.39
Graph 2: The box-and-whisker plot above shows the amount of stress Freshmen get
from courses. The amount of stress ranges from one to 8, and the median is 3. The
data seems to be crowded around 1 to 6.

3. How many activities are you involved in?

Number of Activities Number of Students

None 15

1 5
 2 11

3 10

4 5

5 0

Over 5 0

Mean: 1.67
Standard Deviation: 1.4

Graph 3: The graph above shows the number of activities ninth graders are involved in.
The mode is none, with 15 people choosing none, although 2 and 3 are close up in the
list, each with 11 and 10 people.
4. How dedicated are you to your activities?

Dedication to Activities Levels Number of Students

1 10

2 1

3 2

4 1

5 4

6 10

7 3

8 8

9 3

10 4

Mean: 5.52
Standard Deviation: 3
Graph 4: The graph above shows the dedication levels of the ninth grade students to
their activities. 1 is the mode along with 6, which is not surprising, as many people had
chosen that they did not have any activities. 8 is close up, with 8 people choosing the
stress level 8.

5. How much do your activities stress you?

Amount of Stress from Activities Number of Students

1 14

2 5

3 5

4 4
 5 6

6 5

7 3

8 4

9 0

10 0

Mean: 3.6
Standard deviation: 2.39

Graph 5: This graph shows the stress students feel and the number of students for each
stress scale. You can see that 1 was the most popular option, with 14 votes, and that
the rest of the options, with an exception of 9 and 10, have the votes pretty equally
distrubuted.
6. Are you involved in any sports?

Answer Number of Students

Yes 35

No 11

7. If yes, then how much do sports stress you?

Stress Levels from Sports Number of Students

1 13

2 6

3 3

4 5

5 1

6 1

7 5

8 0

9 1

10 0

Inapplicable* 11
*students who answered no in previous question

Mean: 2.34
Standard Deviation: 2.42
Graph 6: The graph above shows the level of stress freshmen felt from sports. The
scale 1 seems to be the most popular, showing that not many students feel stress from
sports. 11 people were inapplicable, having answered no in the previous survey.

8. How many days a week do you exercise?

Days Students Exercise in a Week Number of Students

1 0

2 9

3 13

4 8

5 3
 6 2

7 7

Inapplicable 11

Mean: 3.39
Standard deviation: 2.35

9. How many minutes per day?

20, 19, N/A, 120, 180, 140, N/A, 100, 90, 90, 75, N/A, 120, 180, N/A, 120, 19, N/A, 25,
30, N/A, N/A, 21, 45, 34, 49, 23, N/A, 18, 80, 75, 38, 29, N/A, N/A, 83, 67, 15, 42, 63,
25, 20, 35, 58, N/A, 45.

Population size: 46
Mean: 46.06
Median: 30
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 180
First quartile: 7.5
Third quartile: 75
Interquartile Range: 67.5
Outliers: 180 180
Standard Deviation: 46.75
Graph 7: This box-and-whisker plot represents the number of minutes freshmen
exercise; the data ranges from 0 minutes to 180 minutes maximum, although 180 is
considered an outlier in the data. Most of the time used in exercise lies under 80
minutes.

10. Do you feel relaxed when you exercise?

Answer Number of Students

Yes 25
 No 10

Inapplicable 11

11. Stress related to sleep:

Stress levels average (x-axis) Sleeping hours (y-axis)

8.33 6

5.33 6

3 8

5.67 6

3.33 8

5.67 8

3.67 9

5.33 4

4 6

5.33 5

3.33 7

3.67 7

6.33 9

5.67 7

3.33 7

5.33 6

5.67 6

5.33 6

4.33 7
4 8

4 6

3 7

4.67 6

4 5

4.67 6

3.67 8

3.33 5

4.67 5

3.67 6

6 8

7.33 7

3.33 6

3.33 9

3 8

5 5

6.67 7

4.33 7

3.33 7

5.33 4

3.33 5

6 7

5 7

3.67 7

7 6
3.67 6

5 6

Graph 8: This graph represents the hours of sleep freshmen get as the y-value and the
amount of stress ninth graders experience as the x-value.

Conclusion:
My hypothesis was that if a student from Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt got more
stress from courses, activities or sports (a stress level of over 5), then the amount of
sleep they get will be less than those of who get less stress. This is because stress from
courses usually tend to be distress, negative stress, instead of eustress, which is
positive stress. Although eustress can result in positive results, distress usually results
in symptoms such as chest pain, low self esteem and also insomnia
(webmd.boots.com). One of the main reasons of sleep deprivation is also stress (The
Sleep Foundation). Therefore, we claimed that high stress will result in less hours of
sleep.

A survey to see if our hypothesis was true was sent out, and 46 out of the 124 people in
the freshmen Facebook group decided to answer our survey.

In the first question, where we sent it out in order to find out the levels of stress that the
9th graders felt due to courses, activities and sports, and the hours of sleep they got on
weekdays. The stress levels were divided into three because accurate stress levels
were needed, instead of just what do you think is your overall stress level?.
In question 1, we got data that was needed for our research question, which was the
relationship between stress and sleep. The question asked the number of hours
freshmen slept during weekdays, and we got answered that varied from 4 hours to 9
hours, with 6 hours being the mode and 6.57 hours being the mean. However, this data
alone was not enough to prove or support our hypothesis.

In the second question, we asked how much the courses stressed each ninth grade
student. The answers were satisfactory, with the stress levels ranging from 1 to 8,
although the answers were mostly populated around 1 to 6. The mode proved to be 1,
and the average 3.6, which seemed to slightly contradict our hypothesis.

6 hours of sleep is considered a low amount of sleep; teenagers are supposed to have
8 to 10 hours of sleep in order to function normally (Sleep Foundation). According to our
hypothesis, the level of stress shouldve been a little higher overall; yes, the average
stress was around 4, which matched the average hours of sleep (6.57) , but the mode of
the stress levels proved to be 1. Because the standard deviation in question 2 was
pretty high, lying in 2.39, in this case, the mode, with the stress level of 1 having
received 14 votes, would be more accurate as a representative number.
Moving on to question 5, it can be observed that the stress levels freshmen experienced
through activities ranged from 1 to 8, once again. The mean proved to be 3.6, and the
mode 1, with 14 votes out of 46. The rest of the stress levels had equally distributed
votes. The data from question 5 was unable to support our hypothesis either for the
same reasons as the data from question 2, for the standard deviation in this case was
also 2.39, a rather high number.

The data from question 5 can be proven from the fact that 15 people from question 3,
which asked the number of activities involved in, responded that they were not involved
in any kind of activities. The mean of the data in question 3 was 1.67, and the standard
deviation 1.4, meaning that the data was close together, and that the mean is suitable
as the representative number for this data. This explains why the amount of stress was
rather low in the activities area (although initially we had included question 4 in the
survey under the educated guess that higher dedication towards ones activities would
mean more stress, it was proved that our educated guess was wrong, as the mode of
the survey was both 1 and 6, and the mean 5.52).

Question 6 asked whether the student taking the survey did sports or not. Based on the
raw data, we were able to see that 11 people responded no, meaning that those 11
people will be inapplicable to the rest of the survey, as it keep asking about sports.

In question 7, it was observable that the stress levels of sports was even lower than that
of question 2 and question 5. The mean stood at 2.34 and the mode at 1. The standard
deviation laid at 2.42, proving that the mode would be a better representative for this
data in this case as well. The data from here was unable to prove our hypothesis right
either for the same reason as the data from question 2 and 5.

The last graph, graph 8, proves to be unable to support our hypothesis at all. An
average of all the stress levels from each category were taken and made into a
scatterplot using the stress levels as the x-axis and the hours of sleep in weekdays as
the y-axis. Graph 8 has no correlation; the dots just appear to be scattered all over the
place with no pattern whatsoever.

Overall, the data that we collected gave us data that proved our hypothesis completely
wrong. This was an unexpected conclusion, as data collected from universities and
studies seemed to prove our hypothesis right. Further research, investigations and tests
should be made to make sure that the data collected from this lab is wholly accurate.

Evaluation:
The way our survey was conducted was not exactly the dictionary definition of accurate,
and I believe that the data collected from the survey is not really the dictionary definition
of reliable either.

First of all, only 46 students out of the 126 students in the 9th grade Facebook group
decided to take the survey and help us collect data. Although 30 was the required
number to meet, and 46 is a fine number, but not enough to draw a fully accurate
conclusion from it. A reason for this mightve been the too-long, tedious survey that
bored the students and found it unmotivating. Shorter questions shouldve been asked
along with taking away questions that were not needed.

Second of all, some of the data collected seemed to contradict itself. For example, in
the question where we asked how many activities the ninth graders took,15 people
answered none. When we asked for the level of dedication for the activities, it would
have been logical to get at least 15 votes. But the number of votes that we got for the
dedication level 1 (I dont care about my activities) was 10 votes. Also, at least 14 votes
should have been collected in the on the stress level 1, which is little to no stress, from
a scale from 1 to 10. However, we got 14 votes on the stress level 1. Either the students
decided to not take the survey seriously, or got confused and didnt remember that they
had no clubs they were involved in. I highly suspect that many people fit into the latter
category. Warnings shouldve been sent out to remind the students to take the survey
more seriously, and that it also will affect part of their peers grades.

Third of all, some research suggested that females tend to experience higher stress
levels than males (American Psychological Association). This was a control variable
that we couldve included in our survey by only taking data from one gender, for
example, in order to get more accurate results.

Finally, when the data was looked over to be analyzed, realization dawned that some of
the questions asked were completely unnecessary and might even interfere with the
investigation itself. For example, the last two questions that asked about hours of
exercise and days of exercise in a week proved to be unimportant, and the first
question, which was initially in the survey but taken out after the first day, which asked
the gender of the survey taker, was unimportant as well. A solution for that mightve
been to look over the questions again and thinking of how it would fit in with the
research question before sending the survey out.

In conclusion, I do still believe our data was leaning towards the reliable side as a whole
though. Although it may have had some variables that were not exactly controlled, and
that the data was not sufficient enough, the data seemed pretty accurate when looked
at as a whole. However, this does not mean that the data was reliable to enough to
draw a concrete conclusion.

Discussion:
After conducting the experiment, I learned that further research could be conducted in
this topic in order to specifically find out how stress affects a students amount of sleep
and also to find out about other factors that influence sleep and stress levels. Although
research has already been conducted in this area by several different organizations,
such as the Sleep Foundation and universities such as Harvard, more should be done.
This is important for the community, for it could be used in order to help sleep-deprived
teens and students suffering from high stress levels, as lack of sleep tends to affect
moral awareness (Sleep Research Society). Also, high distress levels tend to lead to
ineffective work and bad health conditions that might impact schoolwork, in the case of
students at FDR. These will lead to even economical problems if they keep happening
throughout life; low grades will lead to a less-known university which will lead to bad job
conditions, which will directly impact ones life economically. Such research will also
lead to the benefit of other communities, not only the FDR community. Perhaps a similar
investigation could be held somewhere in another community for further information and
more accurate data.

This investigation would have further helped the World Health Organization had we
been able to draw a more precise conclusion. However, although we werent able to
learn about whether stress really affects sleep, we were able to find out several
health-related information such as the hours of sleep ninth grade students get and
stress levels, etc. These could be used to conduct further research as suggested above
and maybe find a solution to these issues, using our information as part of the data
presented.

Resources:

"Stress Management and Health Care." WebMD: Partners in Health. Boots,

2009. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.webmd.boots.com/stress-management/physical-stress-symptoms>.
"External Factors That Influence Sleep." Healthy Sleep. Harvard Medical School,
18 Dec. 2007. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.
<http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/how/external-factors>.
"What Is Insomnia?" National Sleep Foundation. NSF's Education Committee,
2014. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.
<https://sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/content/what-is-insomnia>.
"Gender and Stress." American Psychological Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 4
Dec. 2015.
<http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2010/gender-stress.aspx>.
Olsen, Olav Kjellevold, PHD, Stle Pallesen, PHD, and Jarle Eid, PHD. "The
Impact of Partial Sleep Deprivation on Moral Reasoning in Military Officers."
SLEEP-A Joint Publication of the Sleep Research Society and the American
Academy of Sleep Medicine. The Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, Bergen,
Norway; Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen,
Norway; Norwegian Competence Center for Sleep Disorders, Haukeland
University Hospital, Bergen, Norway, n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=27864>.