Introduction:

Changes in the Sleep/Wake Cycle (SWC) of university students can have consequences on physical, mental and social health. In addition, some behaviors adopted at this stage may be associated with SWC impairment.

Objective:

Therefore, this study aims to identify which factors of social determinants of health (SDH) are associated with poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in university students.

Method:

This is a cross-sectional study that included 298 university students, aged between 18 and 35 years; 73.2% of the students were females and from the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Data were collected from the following questionnaires: Health and Sleep, Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Epworth Sleepiness Scale. To assess the association of SDH with poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness, Poisson Regression with robust variance was performed.

Result:

The prevalence of poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness among the university students was 79.2% and 51.3%, respectively. Between the intermediate determinants of health, a higher prevalence rate of poor sleep quality was observed in students who reported health problems in the previous month (18.4%), smoked (23.5%), drank stimulating beverages close to bedtime (25.8%) and those who used electronic devices before bedtime during the week (18.4%) when compared to those who did not have these behaviors. Regarding excessive daytime sleepiness, students who justified bedtime during the week and wake-up time at the weekend because of the academic demand showed, respectively, 27% and 34% lower prevalence of EDS than the group that did not have these behaviors.

Conclusions:

The high prevalence of poor sleep quality and EDS observed among university students was associated to biological factors and most of them, behavioral factors.

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