Prácticas Reflexivas en las Prácticas de Enseñanza

This study has numerous strengths, including developing a new sleep scale (VOSS), relatively good response rates and findings in a new area of research (developmental community beliefs about sleep). The present study relied on self-administration

questionnaires for volunteer participants to respond about the sleep of people in general, not their own sleep. Questionnaire-based studies may have relatively low response rates, which may create bias. It can be argued that in a sleep survey (e.g., the present study),

people who have a sleep problem are more likely to respond to a questionnaire about sleep. The current study had relatively adequate response rates (Phase One 41.3% and Phase Two 42.2%). The current study did not measure participants’ own personal sleep to screen for participants that either had a sleep disorder or were poor sleepers. Rather the study made the assumption that the majority of participants would not have

insomnia or severely poor sleep. The assumption that the sample represents a wide sample of sleep quality was made. Considering sleep problems are among the most frequent health complaints, the number of people with sleeping problems may have been over-represented in the current sample, leading to more respondents giving answers suggesting dysfunctional views on sleep. This may have influenced the mean scores yielded for both individual items and sum scores on the VOSS and SBS, but is unlikely to have affected group differences. However, such an influence is expected to have been minimised by the fact that the participants were asked to consider the sleep of people in general, not their own sleep. In regards to the younger participants, they were not controlled on whether they had recently studied psychology either at university or secondary school. Previous study of sleep psychology may have resulted in them being more aware of sleep issues than the general population. However, the current study made attempts to get a wide range of participants reflective of the general population, without a strong bias to university students.

The use of the SBS in the study has some limitations. For the purpose of the current study the SBS was used to assess people’s sleep hygiene knowledge. However, some items of the SBS can more be described as measuring stimulus control. Item 5 ‘Going to bed and waking up always at the same hour’ is a compound item and ideally should be separated into two items. It is also debatable as to whether going to bed and waking up at the same hour is recommended for good sleep. Both items 10 ‘Going to bed 2 hours later than the habitual hour’ and item 16 ‘Going to bed 2 hours earlier than the habitual hour’ are more measures of stimulus control. It can also be argued that going to bed earlier or later than the habitual hour are positive behaviours dependant on whether one is sleepy at the time and also shows that the person is not overly preoccupied with sleep. In addition to this, item 18 ‘Being worried about the impossibility of getting enough sleep’ may be more reflective of measuring ones beliefs about sleep. The authors developed this scale to assess people’s sleep behaviour beliefs. For the purpose of the

current study it needs to be acknowledged that the SBS reflects beliefs about sleep that are not confined to just sleep hygiene.

Another possible limitation of the current study is that, the measures/questionnaires used had not been validated for specific use in the general population. However, as set out in the results, factor analyses and reliability analysis were carried out. Further limitations of the current study in regards to the questionnaires were the results of the confirmatory factor analyses. Potential limitations of using a confirmatory factor analysis may have affected these results (as discussed above in section 4.1.1). Further research on the psychometric properties and scale development of the VOSS would be of interest. The current study aimed to rectify the shortcomings in the results yielded by the confirmatory factor analyses by examining the psychometric properties of the summated items that make up the VOSS and SBS scales (which both had good internal consistency) as well as each individual item (which also had good internal consistency). It should be noted that although significant group differences were found using the VOSS and SBS some of the effect sizes of these differences were low. This may indicate that despite there being a significant difference between the two groups on these questionnaires, the strength of this difference is low. Research proposes that a small effect size is 0.10, medium is 0.30 and a large effect size is 0.50 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). The current study found that the significant difference between age groups on the VOSS score was low (0.21). This suggests that conclusions drawn from the VOSS should be interpreted with caution, as large differences were not found. In contrast the significant difference between age groups on the SBS sum score was large (1.00) and the significant difference on the SBS sum score across gender was also large (0.54). Thus the results and conclusions drawn from the SBS appear to be a particularly robust when noting the differences between groups on sleep hygiene knowledge. Overall, this study provided new knowledge about dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep, sleep hygiene knowledge and perceptions of sleep as a function of age. The assessed attitudes and knowledge reflected general community, not personal, perceptions of sleep. Given the lack of published research in the area further research and replication of current findings are needed. This would aid in building a more comprehensive understanding of the incorrect sleep beliefs and attitudes in the general

community. Such an understanding may aid in the prevention of sleeping problems occurring through the development of age targeted sleep education programs addressing factors known to impact on sleep (dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes, sleep perceptions, and sleep hygiene). In addition to this, such information may aid health professionals in the treatment of sleep problems, by focusing and addressing problematic cognitions more specifically.

Further extended areas of research that may be of benefit/interest include the investigation of more community perceptions about sleep and their possibly association/link to developing sleep problems:

 It would be of interest to investigate a more comprehensive account of dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep, sleep hygiene and sleep

perceptions on adolescents (as they current study only investigated this from 18 years of age).

 Further testing of the psychometric properties of the VOSS and SBS on a general population sample to clarify any possible factor structure.

 To further investigate older adults sleep hygiene knowledge to measure whether possible high scores may reflect over-concern regarding sleep (consistent with their responses about sleep beliefs).

 Measuring and controlling for factors such as current sleeping

problems/diagnosed sleeping problems to get a more thorough understanding of community beliefs about sleep as a function of age.

 To longitudinally investigate the development of dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep in the general community and their association with developing more severe sleeping problems.

 The use of education and prevention measures to address community dysfunctional beliefs about sleep. Furthermore, it would be of interest to

measure pre and post education on sleep to people in the general community and any possible relationship with sleep quality.