Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on sleep of undergraduate students: A systematic literature review

Abstract

The 2019 coronavirus pandemic forced the shift to distance education aggravating mental and physical vulnerabilities of undergraduate students, including sleep. This review aims to describe sleep problem rates and prevalence, sleep pattern disruption, sleep duration, sleep quality, insomnia symptoms, psychological and socio-economic factors affecting sleep of undergraduates in 22 countries. A systematic search for articles published from 2020 to 2021 using ‘COVID-19,’ ‘Coronavirus,’ ‘Pandemic,’ ‘Sleep,’ ‘Mental Health,’ and ‘Students’ from PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane yielded 2550 articles, where 72 were included. Selection criteria were: English full-text available articles, undergraduates and not postgraduates, reported sleep outcomes, and participants not from allied health courses. Risk of bias was assessed using various Joanna Briggs Institute checklists and outcomes were descriptively synthesized. Prevalence of sleep problems was notable, while longitudinal studies showed increased rates. There was significantly increased sleep duration, and sleep pattern disruption during lockdowns. Several psychological, behavioural, environmental, demographic, and socio-economic factors were found to be associated with sleep changes. These highlight the pandemic's impact on sleep of undergraduate students and reveal opportunities for institutions to intervene with policies and programs to promote the well-being of undergraduates. Limitations include recall bias and underrepresentation of other countries. This study is self-funded with registration number RGAO-2021-0071.