The relationship between academic success and sleep, stress and quality of life during the first year of physical therapy school

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between academic success and changes in predictor variables of aerobic fitness, sleep, stress and quality of life (QOL) in students enrolled in the first year of a physical therapist education program. Participants: This prospective longitudinal cohort study utilized 37 first-year Doctor of Physical Therapy students. Methods: We investigated the association between grade point average (GPA) and the various predictor variables. A multiple logistic regression model with backward selection was used to predict GPA. GPA greater than or equal to 3.5 or below 3.5 out of a 4.0 scale were used as the dichotomous events. Results: The regression model with the selected-out predictors was a good fit (p = 0.011). About 60% of the variation in the outcome GPA binary can be explained by the selected predictors that were the changes in sleep and QOL. Conclusions: Achieving academic success can be affected by changes in sleep and QOL.

Keywords:

• Fitness
• sleep
• stress
• Quality of Life

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Nicholas D'Agostino, Seena Mathew, Rob Anderson, Kevin Bauman, Sattha Tiangtham, Thomas Greco, Adam Pizow for their assistance in collecting the data for this study.

Conflict of interest disclosure

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the United States of America and received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of The New York Institute of Technology.

Data availability statement

The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.