Written by Jessica Howes
Well, here we are again. With Christmas behind us and another year over (Good Riddance, 2020!), university students across the country are now gearing up for exams, myself included. Now, forgive me for stating the obvious but… exams are stressful, right? And I don’t know about you but the more I stress about upcoming exams, the worse I sleep, and the worse I sleep, the more stressed I feel. It’s a vicious cycle and one that many of us know all too well. The question is: what toll is this lack of sleep and associated stress having on our basic psychological needs? Well, wonder no more as a 2018 study by Rachel Campbell, Bart Soenens, Wim Beyers & Maarten Vansteenkiste (2018) investigated precisely this.
Using a longitudinal design spanning from pre-exams to post-exams, Campbell et al. (2018) aimed to study the bi-directional relationship between satisfaction of basic psychological needs (as operationalised by autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and the quality and quantity of sleep in students. There were 121 participants involved with 86% being Belgian students and 14% non- university students in higher education, all between 19 and 25 years old. Each student was given three questionnaires at three different points in the exam period: before (May), during (June) and after (July), where their stress levels, psychological needs, and sleep and daytime functioning were measured.
It was found that before and during the exam period many students said they experienced reduced sleep quality and lesser satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (which we’ll refer to as needs satisfaction) due to high levels of stress. As hypothesised, when the participants finished their exams, they reported improved quality of sleep and greater needs satisfaction. Moreover, some participants reported better sleep quality and quantity and a greater needs satisfaction after exams than they had before exams.
Taken together, these results indicate that during exam periods students are likely to experience reduced satisfaction of their basic psychological needs, which is likely to be accompanied by increases in stress and sleep disturbances. Not exactly the revelation of the century, I know, but it does provide the basis for designing interventions to combat the stress associated with exams. As Campbell et al. (2018) point out, short-term interventions which encourages students to engage in small, manageable daily activities that satisfy basic psychological needs may help to reduce stress and sleep difficulties during exam periods. Namely, this could be achieved by encouraging students to adopt techniques which facilitate accepting, non-judgmental present moment awareness, such as mindfulness meditation, for example.
However, all this being said, one significant limitation of the study is that it doesn’t allow for conclusions about the direction of effects. Which is to say; poor sleep during exam periods may not only result from stress, but may also contribute to stress, which may lead to reduced need satisfaction. Like I said earlier, it’s a vicious cycle. Still, this lack of clarity about the direction of effects can be addressed in future research and Campbell et al. provide an interesting basis for research on the effect exams have on students’ psychological needs. The better we understand this relationship, the better we can help students manage the stress many will experience during the exam period, and I don’t know about you, but I’ll take all the help I can get to reduce my stress as we edge ever closer to the dreaded Winter exam period!
REFERENCES
Campbell, R., Soenens, B., Beyers, W., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2018). University students’ sleep during an exam period: the role of basic psychological needs and stress. Motivation and Emotion, 42(5), 671-681.