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The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

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Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#31

Post by vl »

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it.

As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school.

Ironically, similar thing happens to me, but sadly there is nobody to take away my phone, as time of this comment shows.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#32

Post by emteycz »

danmcs wrote: post #18
rcar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with all points. I often find that these sorts of observational studies with weak methods that provide evidence for something the unblinded study participants would want to support (e.g., this study, observational studies of the effect of reduced workweek hours on productivity, many of the observational basic income studies) are really hard to evaluate fairly. It becomes easy to latch onto the conclusions when…

I think it's useful to think of studies like this as a MVP. They're relatively cheap and fast. If they give a null result, you've failed fast. If they give a non-null, then you can invest in further study and iterate.

As opposed to a MVP, such study can give you any results you want.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#33

Post by emteycz »

speedgoose wrote: post #27
rossdavidh wrote: post #8

So, I agree it's an interesting idea, and I think this small study could hopefully spur more conclusive ones, but... 1) N=45 2) based on "semi-structured phone interview" Neither of these is a deal-breaker, but what you'd really prefer is some sort of objective measure of sleep quantity, and how it impacted the person. Teenagers are, by and large, entirely aware that when adults ask them questions, they are likely to…

It's the old qualitative vs quantitative debate. Interviewing 45 people can provide much more meaningful information than sending a survey to 1000 people. I'm not saying it's the case there, I'm not an expert in this domain. But 45 semi structured phones interviews is perfectly fine for a lot of research.

I made 45 consecutive structured calls in my life, many times actually. I always could interpret the result in many ways, most of the time complete opposites were the leading interpretations. Their actual behavior afterwards told me the reality. People on the phone will say a lot of things, and it's very easy to accidentally make them reply what you want to hear even though they don't mean it.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#34

Post by clon »

vl wrote: post #31

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, ha…

Anecdotal evidence, but in my school the afternoon shift was associated with more "problematic" behaviour, both boys and girls. More rough and tumble play, that is the technical term I think, more abuse and fighting. Might have something to do with all those mornings without parental supervision.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#35

Post by redis_mlc »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #12
clircle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N=45 is relatively high power for simple analyses, like a t-test (not sure if that's what the paper did). You can detect an effect size of 0.6 with 80% power when N is 45. You can also detect a effect of 0.7 with 90% power at N=45. There are other things that can make results unreliable, like p-hacking, but a sample size of 45 is not a sufficient condition for bad science.

N=45 school-age children suggests that you had some serious problem with randomly selecting them; as does 32/45 girls (p<0.01) and 96% caucasian (p<0.005 against the general population of Montréal).

N=45 is ok. The demographics and gender don't represent current Montreal population, but I don't know how that affects this study:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#36

Post by chongli »

bigbubba wrote: post #17
discreditable wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also so students are at school before parents need to be at work. School is child care for a lot of parents.

If our society took a chill pill with all the 'stranger danger' fear mongering, we could simply let kids walk themselves to school, as was once common not too long ago.

Stranger danger happened because women in the suburbs went from being SAHM’s to working professionals. This turned the suburbs from villages (where there were plenty of adults around to keep an eye on everyone) to “bedroom communities” which are largely abandoned during the day.

It’s one thing to let your kids walk to and from school when you know there are lots of other parents around. It’s entirely another thing when you know the place is a ghost town until all the parents get off work and come back home.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#37

Post by Kbelicius »

vl wrote: post #31

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, ha…

> As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school.

When talking about adolescents, which this study does, this is false since in adolescents the sleep phase is biologically delayed.

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#38

Post by saargrin »

vl wrote: post #31

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, ha…

lived in USSR till 1993 and never heard about two shift schools...

interesting

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#39

Post by Jedd »

vl wrote: post #31

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, ha…

> If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school.

You have forgotten to mention the age of your children.

(Noting that there is a change in circadian rhythm - around 20:30 up until puberty, and then much later - 23:00 or so for late teens - and then later it shifts back earlier. This is fairly well understood and agreed science. So for children under 13 or 14, you'd expect comparable sleep patterns to adults - but for that 15-20 range, not so much.)

Re: The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

#40

Post by sgdpk »

d33 wrote: post #26
lparm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually your speculation is a good one. From the book Why we sleep, by Matthew Walker, it's reported that teenager's circadian rhythm is different from the one of their younger siblings. It's shifted progressively forward, so forward that it passes even the timing of adults. This is something wired in their brain and should be addressed when setting school times. Moreover, Walker also proposes a socio-evolutionary e…

I feel obliged to point out that "Why We Sleep" has been discredited: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

I always see his site mentioned. I am not convinced about this criticism. The author is not an expert on sleep or a neuroscientist. The most you can say is that Walker has not responded to this criticism.
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