THE RELATIONSHIP OF CELL PHONE OVERUSE WITH PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF SLEEP HABITS AND SLEEP DISORDERS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Proper sleep quality is essential for physical and mental health, and it is
associated with many negative outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship
between students’ cell phone overuse and their sleep habits and sleep disorders.
Materials & Methods: In this descriptive- correlational study, 400 students (50% male and 50% femal)
have been selected from university students of Mohaghegh Ardabili in 2012-2013. The students
completed a researcher made demographic questionnaire, Cell Phone Overuse Scale (COS) and the
Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The data were analyzed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient, and
multivariate regression analysis on SPSS-16 software (p<0.05).
Results: Results showed that the most common sleep problem was disability in sleep (69.75%) and cell
phone overuse has positive relationship with bedtime and awakeness time, awakness duration before
sleep, subjective sleep quality, delay in sleeping, sleep disturbance and daily dysfunction (p<0.05).
Regression results also indicated that cell phone overuse explains between 12-29% of sleep habits and
sleep disorder variances in students.
Conclusion: These results showed the necessity of double attention of health profesionals in order to
prevent the adverse effects of cell phone overuse as a risk factor of sleep health, and promotion of
students biopsychosocial health