Relationship Between Sleep Regimen and Performance in United States Navy Recruits

Fatigue due to sleep deprivation is a major factor in both mental and physical performance. Failure of Recruits to receive the proper quality and quantity of sleep can be detrimental to a Recruit's safety and can diminish the amount of information learned during training. During the 1980s, the sleep regimen was decreased to 6 hours of sleep per night. In 2002, a decision was made to give U.S. Navy Recruits an additional two hours of sleep per night. This modification was selected to coincide with the acknowledged adolescent/young adult circadian rhythms. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the new eight-hour sleep regimen using standardized test scores as a performance measure. One year of data with the eight-hour sleep regimen was compared to two separate years when only six hours of sleep was allowed. There is a significant difference, F(2, 33) = 29.82, p < .0001, between the test scores of Recruits receiving 6 hours of sleep and 8 hours of sleep. On average test scores rose by 11 percent with the additional sleep. The odds of observing such a difference is less than one in ten million.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Relationship Between Sleep Regimen and Performance in United States Navy Recruits', published 2004 under ISBN 9781423520160 and ISBN 1423520165.