Sleep, Stress, and Anxiety in NCAA Athletes

Approximately one-in-three Americans use a wearable device, including Fitbit, Oura ring, or Apple watches, to track their health and fitness. While wearable devices have the potential to improve health, their current adoption patterns may be inaccurately measured, potentially worsening existing health disparities. College student athletes represent an under-examined population in psychological research, despite experiencing significant academic, training, and competitive demands. These pressures may negatively affect sleep, a critical factor in physical and mental health. Actigraphy watches are critical research tools providing objective, long-term monitoring of sleep-wake cycles, circadian rhythms, and physical activity; they allow for weeks of data collection, enabling precise diagnosis of insomnia, circadian rhythm disorders, and assessment of treatment efficacy. Our lab plans to use CamNtech Motionwatch 8, a validated actigraphy watch, to explore the effects of stress and other daily demands on the health of NCAA athletes. It is anticipated that objective actigraphy data and subjective self-report data will reveal a variability in sleep duration and efficiency among NCAA athletes, with shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality associated with higher levels of reported stress, competition anxiety, and health issues. Discrepancies between subjective and objective sleep measures are also expected, highlighting the importance of multimodal sleep assessment in athletic populations. Based on the restorative theory of sleep, which holds that sleep is essential for physical and mental recovery through energy replenishment, tissue repair, memory consolidation, toxin removal, and hormonal regulation, proper sleep leads to better health and higher performance, and these findings may help inform targeted interventions to improve overall wellbeing in this population. Despite widespread use of wearable technology, objective sleep patterns in NCAA athletes remain underexamined. This study integrates validated actigraphy with psychological measures to better understand sleep-health-performance relationships and inform targeted interventions for this high-demand population.