This Sleep Factor Matters More Than Actual Sleep Quality, Study Says

For this study, researchers looked at over 100 young participants for two weeks, tracking their sleep habits as they related to things like mood and energy levels.

The participants kept sleep diaries, recording when they started winding down, when they went to bed, how long it took them to fall asleep, when they woke up, how long they took getting out of bed, and how satisfied they were with their sleep.

Then, throughout the day, participants rated their emotions and life satisfaction, as well as wore activity monitors to keep track of their movements versus rest.

And when the study authors looked at all the data, they were surprised to find that sleep satisfaction played more of a role on the participants' wellbeing than you might think.

As the study's lead author Anita Lenneis Ph.D. explains in a news release, "Our results found that how young people evaluated their own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction," adding that when participants reported sleeping better than they normally did, for instance, they actually experienced more positive emotions and had a higher sense of life satisfaction the next day.

Meanwhile, the activity monitor's measure of sleep quality, which is used to determine sleep efficiency, did not predict wellbeing.

"This suggests there is a difference between actigraphy-measured sleep efficiency and people's own perception of their sleep quality in how they link to people's evaluations of their well-being," Lenneis says.