Sleep Practices and Academic Pressure Management Skills among Higher Education Students in Mirpur, Azad Jammu And Kashmir

Abstract

Academic assignments, deadlines, exam handling, and competing demands must be managed by the student at the university, and adequate rest must be allowed for optimal cognitive and emotional functioning of the student. Sleep is therefore not just related to academic functioning, but also to students' organization and management of academic demands. In this study, sleep habits and academic stress management skills of undergraduate students at Mirpur University of Science and Technology (MUST), Mirpur, AJK were explored. A quantitative descriptive-correlational design was used. The target population for the study was 3,162 undergraduate students in 11 selected departments and 385 students were selected by simple random sampling using Cochran's formula. The data were obtained using a questionnaire developed by the researcher consisting of 25 questions with a Likert scale from 1 to 5. The items were related to sleep duration, sleep hygiene, sleep quality, academic workload management, and strategies and adaptation. The content validity was determined by experts and the Cronbach's alpha value from pilot testing with 40 respondents was .849. Descriptive statistics and Pearson product-moment correlations were used for analysis. The results suggest that sleep practices are linked to students' self-reported capacity to cope with academic tasks, but the small effect sizes suggest that sleep is not the only part of a larger academic coping structure. Implications for student support, academic advising, sleep-health education, and workload planning in higher education are discussed.