The purpose of this study was to make clear the relationship between sleeping habits and sleeping problems and/or physical discomforts among junior high school students. The subjects were comprised of 146 boys and 170 girls in three public junior high schools. The investigation was carried out by a questionnaire in September 2003. The questionnaire contained questions about the time subjects go to bed, time subjects wake up, sleeping problems and physical discomfort. The main findings were as follows: 1) The time subjects go to bed becomes later with increasing age among both boys and girls (p<0.05). Meanwhile, the fluctuations in time to bed showed no significant differences according to sex or grade. 2) The group who went to bed late had significantly higher values for sleeping problem scores and physical discomfort scores (p<0.05). 3) The sleeping problem scores according to fluctuations in time to bed were: for the low fluctuations group, 12.5±13.7 points, 18.7±17.2 points for the middle fluctuations group, and 24.3±20.5 points for the high fluctuations group. The sleeping problem scores for the high fluctuations group were significantly higher than it was for the low fluctuations group (p<0.05). 4) The physical discomfort scores were 20.1±29.8 points for the low fluctuations group, 29.5±30.3 points for the middle fluctuations group and 41.3±30.2 points for the high fluctuations group. The physical discomfort scores for the high fluctuations group were significantly higher than those for the low and middle groups (p<0.05).
From the above, it was shown that there is a need for the regulation of time to bed to be added to traditional health education.
